


I've broken all your windows and I've rammed through all your doors

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (I MEAN I'M TRYING also more later probably), (though more in part two I guess), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bathing/Washing, Brienne of Tarth Needs A Hug, Brienne of Tarth is the Best, Caretaking, Communication, Daenerys Targaryen Is Not a Mad Queen, Dissociation, Dreamscapes, Episode: s08e05 The Bells, Experimental Style, F/M, Fix-It, Forgiveness, Gen, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Jaime Lannister Lives, Jaime Lannister Needs a Hug, Jon Snow Knows Something, Post-Episode: s08e06 The Iron Throne, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stream of Consciousness, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Tyrion Lannister Also Needs a Hug, Tyrion Lannister is a Good Sibling, also this absolutely handwaves any serious political consequence of 8x05 but dnd didn't plan it, and so neither am I and I'm just doing what's convenient, catatonic state, gratuitous book canon thrown in because i can, minor bronn/tyrion, nicer tags will be added with part two is2g, not for cersei fans, past jaime/cersei obv, sam tarly for mvp, trauma recovery pretty much, vague background jonerys too but honest it's barely the point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:33:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24233629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “I should hate you. You know that, gods, if you were awake you would probably tell me the same. You did want me to hate you, you fucking — I can’t even bring myself to call you names, how bloody pathetic is that? I can’t — I can’t believe that it’s the dead of the night and I had my perfectly serviceable rooms and then I could not sleep and now I’m here because even seeing you like this is better than not having you nearby at all?”or: in which Jaime survives the fall of the Red Keep but is hardly unaffected. Brienne is hardly unaffected, either.
Relationships: Bronn & Jaime Lannister, Bronn/Tyrion Lannister (minor BUT IT'S THERE), Jaime Lannister & Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Tyrion Lannister & Brienne of Tarth, Tyrion Lannister & Jon Snow
Comments: 109
Kudos: 317





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo, this is part one of what I dubbed my 'one-year anniversary of that joke of a show spitefic' which admittedly I wanted to write after 8x05 last year but... yeah. Let's just say I wasn't really in the right frame of mind for it, but now I am and I figured I'd go for it because fuck that it's been a year and I still need to finish dealing with that fuckery, so here we go, part one is here, part two hopefully will go up on the 19th as in the actual anniversary of the finale's airing. Don't worry I'm still not being an asshole to the both of them but... expect the actual fluff for the next part /o\
> 
> Other than that: the title and the section headers are from (SURPRISE!) bruce springsteen's [_for you_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCY1_msUYPQ) which I decided months ago was a perfect song for this plot and those two post-8x04 anyway (listen for more angst I guess ;) ), I own zilch and believe me if I did S8 would have been wholly different, and... see you all on the 19th I guess. *saunters back downwards*

1\. _barroom eyes shine vacancy, to see him you gotta look hard_

_There’s a sharp pain in the middle of his chest as Jaime opens his eyes and sits up straight on the bed, feeling like he’ll throw up, his breath coming up short._

_The room around him is dark._

_But it’s cold._

_It’s cold like — like a room in Winterfell where no one remembered to rekindle the fire._

_He — he thinks — he thinks he dreamed he went back to Cersei and left Brienne crying in the middle of the yard because that part of him that never_ never _never shut up and that he’s never known to be silent told him that he didn’t deserve to be happy he didn’t deserve to live when Cersei was going to die and that he was her and she was him even if he didn’t really_ want _it, and then he went away inside just before leaving her because he couldn’t do it if he had — if he_ hadn’t _, and then he stayed that way because it just was easier, and then —_

 _And then he was stabbed and now that he considers it, his side_ hurts _and it burns the way it might have if someone had indeed pierced through it with a knife or a sword, he doesn’t even remember anymore, and then she had been there and he had told her_ something _he can’t even remember because he was so far away he could barely put two words together_ —

_He must have dreamed of it. There’s no other explanation._

_But now everything is dark and he’s sure he’s not there because it’s a bed underneath him even if he’s so so so_ cold _and if he tries to touch to the other side of it it’s empty and that’s not how it should be —_

_Maybe he should just — maybe he’s still dreaming. Or maybe he should just go back to sleep and he’ll be fine when he wakes up again._

_Yes, that makes sense. He will just — go back. Yes. He can sleep some more._

_Fuck, he_ is _tired. So tired. Not even a month in Winterfell could make it any better, but —_

_But maybe longer._

_Yes. Yes, that — that could be it. He needs to sleep._

_Maybe when he wakes up Brienne will be there_.

*

“Fucking Seven Hells,” Tyrion almost screams, the tears falling over his face stopping at once.

Then he presses his shaking fingers to Jaime’s wrist again.

He hadn’t had any hopes left when he started going through the rubble, and well — he hadn’t even looked at Cersei twice, not when he saw what the bricks had made of her cracked skull, and one day he would have rejoiced in seeing it, but assuming that he would have fished _Jaime_ out of that rubble, too, kind of took out any enjoyment he might have had at _that_ sight.

He _had_ fished him out, and he had looked dead for all purposes, and _then_ he had started crying because what the fuck was the point of _him_ being the last Lannister left, what a goddamned jape —

And then he had touched Jaime’s wrist trying to haul him out for good and he had felt a pulse, and —

He’s sure he made it up. He’s sure he _wants_ it to be true so much that he made it up, and so he touches it again with shaking fingers —

For a long, long moment nothing happens.

Then he feels it.

It’s faint, it’s barely there but _it is_ and when he leans forward and puts the other in front of Jaime’s mouth he _does_ feel a faint breath leaving his lips.

His first instinct is trying to wake him up, but —

But it would be fucking ridiculous and if he’s alive sure as fuck he has at least a broken leg or _something_ broken after an entire ceiling fell on him, and —

No. He’s going to find a guard or ten first, have them bring him somewhere safe and try to convince the Queen to… _not_ have his head.

One step at a time.

He can cry about it _later_ , he thinks, wiping his eyes.

— —

“I will ask her,” Jon Snow says after Tyrion tells him _why_ his brother is currently being brought to one of the few empty rooms in the keep and why he asked one of the army’s maesters to look after him.

“What? To — to, uh, let him live?” Tyrion replies, not sure he heard right.

“I will,” Jon replies. “I mean, she — she couldn’t have known that those bells meant they surrendered, and for that matter I’m sure Cersei didn’t give them that order. It was your brother ringing them, right?”

“Yes,” Tyrion sighs. “I shouldn’t have forgotten that… until now it always meant the contrary. I really was a shit Hand, wasn’t I?”

“I got _killed_ for trying to do my job at the Wall,” Jon shakes his head. “We all got things wrong. Anyway, that throne is hers, I absolutely have no intention to contest it and — I — I love her. Regardless of…” He lets his voice trail away, then shakes his head again, standing up straighter. “I _will_ ask her. You have always been a friend regardless of everything and you don’t deserve — well. I lost two brothers. I don’t wish anyone to lose theirs, too, especially if they were… close. Just go be with him, I will let you know.”

Tyrion reaches up, feeling a knot in his throat, taking Jon’s hand between both of his and squeezing.

“Thank you,” he says. “I — I will go, then, if —”

“Of course,” Jon says. “Go. You should be there.”

Tyrion nods again, telling himself that _he’s not going to fucking cry_ , and heads back to his tent.

Jon can handle the rest, he supposes.

At worst, Lord Davos _can_ smuggle them both out, he thinks, and tries to not start laughing hysterically.

— —

Turns out, Jaime _does_ have a broken leg and a broken wrist and banged up ribs, and of course the stab wound on his side, but other than that, the maester says, nothing else. _A miracle_ , he says, _a true miracle that he would survive that_.

Tyrion wonders _how_ , but when the maester leaves and says he will be back to check on them in a few hours and if anything happens Tyrion should make sure to call for him, Tyrion drops sitting next to the hastily made cot in the tent, fingers going to Jaime’s wrist again.

The pulse is there. Less faint, still not strong or fast, but _there it is_.

“Seven Hells,” Tyrion says, “I can’t — you _asshole_ , I can’t believe you almost died like _that_ and — never fucking mind it. You should be awake for me to actually insult you as much as I can, so I would really just fucking appreciate it if you _did_ and then we could talk like… well. Like you weren’t caught riding South to fucking _die with her_ , how about it?”

Nothing.

Well, obviously.

What was he expecting, that he’d just go and open his eyes and smile at him the way he used to when they were kids and tell him that things would be fine?

Gods, he _really_ needs to get a fucking grip on this. At least the maester cleaned Cersei’s blood off Jaime before leaving, which Tyrion greatly appreciates.

He lets Jaime’s wrist go and sits back.

He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.

He stays like that for a while and then Jon Snow walks into his tent, looking ten years older than he was when he set foot on Dragonstone.

“She agreed,” Jon says.

“Wait, she _did_?” Tyrion asks. “Just like that?”

Jon shrugs, dropping down on the ground next to him. “Well, I told her that it would have been exceedingly cruel to do it when he was your last living relative and so on, and she said that at the end of it you had been loyal and tried your best, and so it would have been unnecessary to kill him when he’s been… punished enough, apparently. Also, she’s expecting him to kneel the moment he can do it, but I supposed that wouldn’t be a problem.”

“It won’t be,” Tyrion agrees at once. He’ll make fucking sure it’s _not_.

“Well then. She told me that she wants to see you as soon as you can make time for it but you can take a day or so. Gods, I want to fucking sleep for the next ten years,” Jon sighs, and he _sounds_ like it.

“Thank you,” Tyrion says again. “I don’t know how —”

“It’s all right,” Jon says. “I’m tired of seeing people die, for that —” He stops, squints, then — “Uh,” he says, “Look at him.”

Tyrion turns towards the bed as Jon stands up, and for a moment he thinks, _no, he can’t have just died_ —

But then he sees what Jon saw and —

Oh.

Jaime _did_ open his eyes.

Except that they’re staring into _nothing_ and he hasn’t seen them so dull in his entire fucking life, and he’s not moving otherwise.

Jon bends down, holding up a hand, clicking his fingers a couple of times right in front of his eyes.

Nothing happens.

Nothing at all.

“This makes no sense,” Tyrion says, his heart dropping. “He’s _awake_ , isn’t he?” He shakes Jaime’s shoulder, but nothing happens, and his arm is still lying down across the cot, hand dangling over the edge.

Jon shakes his head. “But he’d be hearing us if he were, right? Can — can I try something?”

Tyrion nods, and Jon tentatively reaches out, moving Jaime’s wrist to the mattress, letting the arm lie straight at his side. He gets no resistance whatsoever and then Jaime doesn’t move the arm at all, it just… stays there.

“I’ll get the maester,” Jon says.

“Thank you,” Tyrion says, and does nothing until the maester arrives and asks to be left alone so he can check the situation.

Tyrion gets out of the tent feeling like his stomach is going to fucking eat itself.

It takes the maester what seems like a long, _long_ time to come out, except that maybe it just _felt_ like it. He doesn’t know anymore.

The maester looks troubled.

“What of it?” Tyrion asks when he doesn’t speak first.

The maester sighs.

Tyrion _really_ doesn’t like where this is going.

“We will need to wait a few days,” he says, “to be sure. But — he’s… well. He’s alive and not dying anytime soon. About the state he is in… I have seen something similar in soldiers, though not very often.”

 _Oh,_ _no_ , Tyrion thinks. _Please don’t say that_ —

“It usually happens when… things are too much for them, I suppose. And there is… no treatment that we know of.”

“In the sense that he’s going to die?” Tyrion asks, and when Jon Snow puts a hand on his shoulder he almost weeps in gratitude.

The maester shrugs. “Some go back to normal after a few days. Others take longer. Others don’t come back at all. Only time can tell. When things are settled maybe ask if at the Citadel they have anyone who might have studied it more than me, maybe. But for now I cannot do more.”

“I understand,” Tyrion says. “Thank you.”

The maester nods and leaves.

Tyrion thinks he can’t really stand up much longer.

“I — I will go tell the Queen that it will take you maybe a couple of days to see her.”

“Please,” Tyrion replies, and goes back into the tent before Jon leaves.

When he goes back inside the tent, Jaime is still staring at the ceiling, seeing nothing.

“I guess you aren’t playing a prank on me, are you,” Tyrion asks.

Nothing. Of course _nothing_.

No one is outside the tent.

Tyrion moves to the corner and lets himself cry _for real_ for a long, long time.

When he wipes his eyes, Jaime is still staring at the ceiling and hasn’t moved an inch.

2\. _I stand stuffed like some soldier undaunted_

_The pain has gone, which is good, but — he thinks his leg hurts a bit, which is weird because it’s usually his right hand that does, not… not the leg. Jaime stirs under the furs, feeling them lower slowly downwards, and suddenly his shoulder is uncovered and it’s cold,_ so so so so cold _, and he immediately drags the fur back on himself._

_It’s dark again, but it’s… not a bad darkness. Brienne should be near and she’s not, and that’s wrong, gods he knows it’s wrong and he can still feel that stupid nightmare cling to his fucking skin, seeping down to his bones, and now he thinks maybe he hears Tyrion knocking on the door, but he’s probably making it up._

_He’s tired._

_He thinks he should sleep some more._

_He curls into the fur, drawing it completely over his head, and now it’s properly hot and blissfully dark and empty, and it’s fine._

_Until Brienne’s back, he doesn’t think he’s interested in leaving it_.

*

“How… how is it going?” Jon Snow asks.

Tyrion shrugs, getting down from his chair and motioning for him to leave the room. It’s not like Jaime is going to _hear_ them.

But still.

Talking about him with someone else when he’s staring into nothing makes his skin crawl.

“The same as a week ago,” Tyrion says, shaking his head. “The wounds are doing better, he’ll stay where you put him, and he’s still… like that. I imagine our Queen wants me to… take back my duties, doesn’t she?”

“She said you _really_ should talk to her,” Jon says, “but I’m available to cover for you for a while yet, if you need it.”

It _is_ a sweet offer.

He considers it for a moment.

“I probably _should_ ,” he agrees. “It’s not like being here has changed anything at all. And according to the maester talking to him _might_ help but no one is sure of that, so no one is the wiser and maybe I should distract myself some.” He bites down on his lip. He doesn’t say, _maybe if someone else was here_ , because it’s not like he can ask —

“You know,” Jon says slowly, lowering his tone of voice, “maybe… oh, Seven Hells, fuck it all. I can see what you’re _not_ asking me.”

“I could not ask of your sister that she sent over _her sworn sword_ after he most likely didn’t leave her with sweet words, Jon.” _Even if I wish I could, and she would owe me considering that I wish she never told me whose son you were_ , he doesn’t say, but he’s plenty sure Jon can hear it anyway, considering how sour he looks, and it’s not directed at him.

Jon shakes his head and kneels down, moving closer so their heads are near and no one in the walls could hear him whispering.

“Sandor Clegane survived,” he says, his voice barely audible.

“ _What_?” Tyrion blurts back. “But his helmet —”

“His _helmet_. He threw his brother down from the balcony with it and then he ran, but he was — hiding. And he has apparently convinced my fucking sister to go back home, so I’m sending them both to Winterfell tonight. Dany knows and she didn’t object, except that she’s plenty cross with Sansa for… well. I can’t blame her. _So_ , they’re leaving tonight. Sansa is most likely _not_ leaving Winterfell. _But_ … the last time she didn’t leave it, she sent Brienne.”

“Jon —”

“What I’m saying is that I could ask Clegane to — well. Inform her of the situation so that she could come if she wants to, and she can use the pretense that she’d go in Sansa’s stead. It costs me nothing, and he has to ask Sam to come down here too because I think we do need a new maester and I’ll trust him over anyone else. And however it went between then, she _should_ know, I think. I would want to, if I were here.”

That’s — that’s a point, Tyrion concedes. “And what would our gracious Queen do with her?”

“She said she has no problems with _Brienne_ or your brother but that she _does_ have them with my sister, so — I will have to smooth it out. So, do you want to send word to her or do I just tell Clegane or…? It’s your choice.”

“And just out of curiosity, what is _your_ gain out of all this?”

Jon shakes his head. He looks fifteen years older than he actually is.

“I’m tired of seeing people die around me, that’s my gain. Also, I thought we were at least somehow friendly, or was I wrong?”

Tyrion shakes his head, a hand squeezing Jon’s forearm before taking a step back. “No,” he says, “you weren’t. Thank you. Uh, if you give me a moment I can write a message for the lady and then I can go see the Queen.”

“Take your time,” Jon says. “We have enough of it.”

Tyrion nods and hurries into the room, climbing on the chair in front of the only desk. Thankfully there are parchments and a quill.

He thinks for a moment of what to write.

Then he decides there is no point in wasting time with flowery words or explaining things in detail.

He starts writing, and if Jaime’s unseeing eyes are staring at his back, he tries to not think about it.

— —

_Lady Brienne,_

_I will not presume that you will want to read this letter, nor that you will care for its contents. What I can tell you is that my brother has not, in fact, died, but he is not doing well at all and while he hasn’t asked for you because he cannot, well, ask for anyone, I cannot help thinking that maybe your presence could… do something for his current condition. But as I am sure that you might not care nor want anything to do with him, all things considered, feel free to throw this missive in the fire if you would rather stay in Winterfell. If not… I will be waiting for you._

_Respectfully,_

_Tyrion Lannister_

3\. _but you let your blue walls get in the way of these facts_

_He thinks someone is trying to turn him over._

_He burrows into the covers and the furs even more._

_He doesn’t care about anyone else outside them if it’s not her, and she’s obviously not back yet._

_Maybe he’s still dreaming?_

_Maybe he is._

_Or maybe he’s just — awake and he needs to go back to sleep until she’s back._

_How long can this night last, after all?_

_He survived the long night, he can survive a few hours without her, even if the idea is making his stomach fucking turn._

*

Tyrion watches Clegane go with Arya Stark in tow and he doesn’t dare hoping he’ll come back with _her_.

Before he goes to talk to Daenerys, hoping to convince her to _not_ consider burning Winterfell down both for Jon and because it wouldn’t be a good idea and because people are tired of wars, he glances back into Jaime’s room. _His_ room. Whatever.

He’s still staring at the ceiling.

He had his eyes closed before, but it’s not like it changes anything when he opens them. Actually, when he sleeps at least Tyrion can tell himself that everything is as fine as it gets, it’s when he stares emptily at the ceiling that he can’t — that he _can’t_ look at him.

 _No response whatsoever_ , the maester told him yesterday.

 _Makes sense that the last thing Cersei would do in her blasted life would have been taking him with her at all costs even if he’s not even dead_.

He thought —

He thought he looked reborn when he and Brienne stopped dancing around each other. There was that spark in his eyes that Tyrion hadn’t seen in _years_ , he smiled like he meant it, he looked ten years younger…

And that was _not_ how he had looked in that tent.

Not at all.

 _Fuck her_ , Tyrion thinks and doesn’t say, and closes the door.

Then he goes to see his Queen and tries to force himself to _stop_ thinking about Jaime right now.

It wouldn’t do anything good.

4\. _your pulse is getting weak_

It’s been too long, _he thinks, and while he usually wouldn’t get worried because he knows she’ll be back, she always did, she’s always come back and she’s always stayed even when they were supposed to hate each other, gods_ she swore a vow she’d keep him safe, hadn’t she _, so he knows —_

_He knows she’ll be back, it’s just —_

_He doesn’t know if he’s asleep or dreaming any more at this point. It’s all dark and it’s comfortable and warm and he doesn’t want to leave but he’s also been alone for so long by now, gods he wants her back, he hadn’t known he could get addicted to her touch and her skin and her smell and the way she curls at his back at night so fast but then again hadn’t they been dancing around it for months,_ years _even, and gods if he thinks he dreamed he left her for Cersei —_

_Some part of him goes cold all over again, feeling like someone is stabbing him in the stomach once twice thrice four times and he flinches away from it every single time, and suddenly he just wants to go to sleep all over again for good until she wakes him up and no one else._

_Why would he go back?_

_Why would he listen when a part of his brain he wishes he had burned out long ago says that he doesn’t deserve to be happy?_

_No._

_No, he wants to stay, he wants to_ stay — — —

 _He_ needs _to stay — —_

 _With her_ —

*

“My lord,” the maester says, “I’ll admit, I don’t like this.”

Tyrion, who hasn’t liked this entire situation _period_ since it began, isn’t sure that he wants to know what exactly it is that the maester doesn’t like.

Still, he wants to think he’s not a coward, and so he’ll ask.

“What exactly?”

The maester shrugs. “His heartbeat used to be… more regular,” he settles on. “It’s a bit too fast now. If it’s the case, well, usually _something else_ changes, in my limited experience.”

“… And he hasn’t.”

Jaime’s green, dull eyes still stare vaguely towards the mirror on the opposite side of the room. His lips are barely parted, not that it’s visible under the beard growing in.

Which had turned out being _another_ problem, since when the maester tried to shave it he kept on jerking away from the blade, the only motion he’s ever made until now of his own accord, and so… they’re letting it grow. But it doesn’t look healthy by now. Not at all.

There are specks of grey in it.

Tyrion shakes his head and turns his attention back to the other man.

“No,” the maester says. “I’m sorry. But — it’s not a good development. I hope I’m wrong.”

“Me, too,” Tyrion sighs as the man goes.

He should go back to his duties — he and Jon have _barely_ managed to convince Dany to wait before she has Sansa’s head and to see if they can solve this differently and there’s still the matter of whoever survived the sack being scared shitless of the dragon, but —

He moves closer, grabs Jaime’s fingers, squeezes them.

His hand is warm, but they don’t move along his at all.

 _It’s been two weeks_ , Tyrion thinks in despair as he leaves the room. _Clegane and Arya Stark must be in Winterfell now. So it will be two more to wait_ if _she comes back_.

Gods.

He really, really hopes she does, even if she doesn’t deserve any of it.

5\. _I came for you (but you did not need my urgency)_

_He thinks the door is opening._

_He thinks he can hear it._

_He’s not absolutely sure, though._

_He turns on his other side, grasping his furs harder. It’s still so warm — good._

_He thinks the door has closed._

_Maybe he should check, but the fire has died a long time ago and it would be no point if it’s not her._

_He hears a sound. He doesn’t know if it’s a voice. Maybe some rustling. Could it be that she’s back and rekindling the fire?_

_He hopes it is, but he doesn’t dare look, not when his dream of going to Cersei is still clinging to his skin, making him feel dirty, like he doesn’t deserve being in her bed, like he doesn’t even deserve being near her, which is what he thought when he did leave her in the dream, after all — —_

*

“My lady,” Tyrion says, thinking that he _would_ fall to his knees if it wouldn’t look ridiculous and if he wasn’t too tired even for _that_ , “I — I am glad you’re here. Despite everything.”

Brienne of Tarth, who isn’t even _wearing her damned armor_ , and he knows that it was a rare thing that she _wouldn’t_ put it on, gives him a barely there smile. She looks _tired_ — there are bags under her eyes, darkening her skin, and her hair is longer than it used to be and her travel cloak is dusty and it’s obvious that she’s made the best time she could. It’s been a week and a couple of days, after all.

She’s wearing Oathkeeper at her hip.

Still.

Tyrion wants to cry.

“I — I had to be,” she finally replies. “You weren’t too forthcoming in your letter, my lord. Would you care to explain the matter?”

He knows she won’t ask to refresh herself or bathe before they talk.

He might as well tell her now.

“I suppose you were told of… what transpired before the city was burned down.”

“I was,” she says softly. Her tone is carefully neutral. Of course it is.

“I, uh. Found him under the ceiling of the Red Keep. Cersei was dead. He… he wasn’t. He was hurt, moderately, but physically it was almost a miracle. Except that… well. He’s been… unresponsive, I suppose.”

Brienne pushes her lips in a line, her fingers suddenly curling into a fist before she stops it. “What do you mean?”

Tyrion shrugs again. “He has opened his eyes, but… it’s as if he sees nothing of what’s going on around him. He won’t answer when called, he won’t move unless moved, he does swallow food but doesn’t chew it which is why the maester is only feeding him soups, and he will swallow water but not actively. The only time he’s reacted to any touch it was when the maester tried to shave him. And… that’s how it’s been since I found him. I — I think it’s obvious it won’t be _me_ rousing him from — whatever it is. And I would not ask it of you, because — I mean. I hardly think you owe him anything after he… ended up here instead of staying. But I thought you might want to know regardless.”

She nods minutely, her hands worrying a piece of her cloak. She says nothing for a long time.

“My lord,” she finally says, “thank you for your honesty. And — while I admit that when I got your letter I was trying to _not_ think about him at all too much for how painful it was, I realized I couldn’t sleep at night after reading it, and — however things went, I think I need to see him. Regardless. So, if you will —”

“Of course,” Tyrion says. It’s not as if he has anyone else to deal with — she said that others from Winterfell were coming and that Sansa actually _sent her sister with Gendry to treat_ , but she rode ahead of them, so they won’t be here for a few days. “Do follow me.”

She follows him. When he opens the door, he says that if she wants to just see how things are she can wait at the door.

She nods.

He moves closer. Jaime is still staring at the ceiling with eyes half-open, and when Tyrion puts his arm back on the bed from where it was dangling down the side of it. He lets him, but doesn’t react either. His beard has gotten _long_ , Tyrion thinks in despair. His clothing is also getting dirty but since he won’t walk to a bath they’re getting by with sponges and it’s not as if anyone has managed to find fresh clothing that actually fits him that’s not cobbled from different people. His hair is longer than it was a month ago.

He looks a downright mess, Tyrion thinks and doesn’t say. He tries to speak, call his name. Nothing.

He hears Brienne coming closer, putting her sword away against the wall and her cloak on the nearest chair, and then she moves to his side.

Her wide, blue eyes turn _pained_ at the sight.

“Gods,” she says, “I — I thought he looked beside himself when he left.”

“… Can I ask how did that go?” Tyrion asks.

“Well,” she says, “he told me he was as hateful as his sister and that he was a terrible person and he couldn’t stay and he left me crying in the middle of the yard, to make it short.”

Tyrion is going to fucking _murder_ him all over again when he wakes up again.

“Sounds like the worst part of him,” Tyrion says.

“Admittedly, he was holding on to my hand tight enough to hurt when he said it, so… I had my suspicions about how much he meant it. Regardless, he looks worse now. Uh, may I —?”

“Please,” Tyrion says. “It’s not as if you could possibly make it worse.”

She nods, taking a deep breath. Tyrion wonders if it’s his eyes deceiving him or her face looks a tad softer than it used to be.

Or maybe it’s just the way she’s looking at Jaime, like someone who definitely is still in love with him regardless of everything.

Her throat works up and down as she kneels next to him, her fingers trembling wildly as they brush against his cheek.

“Jaime…?” She whispers, and she sounds — so _gentle_ , and _how_ could the idiot even think it was a good idea to leave her behind?

Then —

 _Then_ his eyelids go up and while his eyes are still dull and unfocused and his lips are still parted and he’s still not moving, he _nuzzles into her touch_ , and when she moves her hand away as if burned he makes a tiny, soft, sad noise in the back of his throat.

 _What_ —

“Did — did this happen before?” Brienne asks.

“No,” Tyrion says, feeling stupidly hopeful, “and — he’s only ever flinched if anyone touched his face with a blade. For shaving.”

She nods, then gently turns Jaime on his back — he lets her — and sits on the side of the bed, _both_ hands cupping his face.

He turns his cheek into a hand first, the other later.

Brienne’s face goes pale as she moves a hand away and grasps his.

He —

He curls his fingers back against hers. A tiny bit. Not enough to properly hold it.

But _still_ —

“Would it be too much,” Tyrion whispers, “to ask you to — not leave at once?”

She gives him a very sad smile, but it’s… well. She means it.

“My lord —”

“I think you _can_ call me Tyrion at this point,” he says, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

“ _Tyrion_ ,” she says, “I — I swore Catelyn Stark a vow to keep him safe when I _despised_ him. I don’t know how — how it would go if he was, well. His usual. But — vows are for life. I would be an extremely poor knight of the Seven Kingdoms if I left at once now, wouldn’t I?”

Tyrion doesn’t even try to hide that a few tears want to escape his eyes.

“He didn’t deserve you,” he says, “but thank you.”

“That… that’s not what it was about,” she says, her thumb running over his cheek as he keeps on searching for her touch. “I don’t think _deserving_ ever was part of the equation. But thank you. I — well. I suppose we’ll see how this goes.”

“I — I guess I’ll leave you to it, then. Or to _him_. Just — let me know. I had rooms readied for you, just… call for a guard and they will find me.”

“Very well.” She nods, and Tyrion leaves, but not before he sees her moving her head downwards, her lips parting, and he’s sure she’s just asked, _where have you gone_?

He’s not sure he wants to know.

He just wants him to be —

—

—

“— _back, now get out of those furs,” and oh, it’s her, it’s_ her _, and Jaime immediately moves away the furs and there she_ is _, looking a bit tired, but her eyes are blue and sparkling with happiness as she looks down at him, cupping his cheek._

_“Oh,” Jaime says, “I thought — I don’t know anymore,” he says, taking in the fire lightened in the room and dawn filtering through the windows._

_“What?” She asks, sweetly, leaning down a bit._

_“I — had a nightmare,” he finally says. “And — it was bad. And strange. But it’s fine. You’re here, I don’t care about that now.”_

_“Well, all right,” she says, kicking off her boots, lying down next to him. “But if you want to talk about it, it’s all right_.

_He’ll remember the offer._

_But now he just — wants her to touch him and forget about it all._

6\. _I'll stand on file, he’s all I ever wanted_

The last time she did _this_ —

Gods.

The last time she did _this_ , Brienne thinks as she tightens her hold around the knife, he was — he was — he hadn’t said a word and he had almost fainted in that bath and he had just told her the truth about Aerys Targaryen and he had _let_ her, but when he looked at her, he… _knew_ it was her.

She’s quite sure of _that_.

Now…

She breathes, cups Jaime’s face with her left hand, tilting it slightly back, keeping it in place.

He doesn’t move an inch, _letting her_ , and when the maester said that she was welcome to try but he’d fight anyone who even moved his fingers close to his face she had figured it might be the same eventually…

But he’s not.

He’s letting her move or _not_ move his head as she starts cutting off the mess that his beard has become — it’s not well-kept and soft as it was in Winterfell.

It’s… not _knotted_ yet, but tangled, maybe, and there’s more white in it than there used to be, and he’s _thinner_ because of course he hasn’t eaten anything substantial in a month, and a part of her is saying _why are you doing this, he left you crying in the middle of the damned yard after a month of bedding you blathering nonsense about his fucking sister_ , but it’s…

Gods.

She wishes she could listen to it.

But she _can’t_ , not when he’s staring past her with dull green eyes and he’s _still_ letting her do this.

She swallows, the blade scraping across his throat.

“Gods,” she whispers, getting rid of coarse hair carefully, “I could damn well kill you like this and you wouldn’t be any wiser for it.” She receives no answer. But he doesn’t pull back or push her away either.

She angles his head a bit backwards and moves under his chin after wiping the knife on a nearby cloth.

“I did consider ignoring your brother’s raven, you know,” she says again. “For a moment. Then I felt like I couldn’t look at myself if I did. A right idiot, am I not,” she shakes her head. She brushes hair away from his throat with her thumb after she’s done shaving him under his chin, and he — just — _lets her_.

“I figured we could at least _talk._ Convenient of you to… not be able to, I guess.” She lets herself laugh, then moves the knife up, to his cheek. The dull and brittle hair goes away at once, she barely needs to go over it twice. He only moves once, barely, _following her hand_ when she switches the side of his face she’s holding up, and she has to stop for a moment because she’s sure she _will_ cry if she doesn’t.

“I feel like a damned idiot,” she goes on as she shaves away more hair. “After Renly, after people who told me I could never — no one would ever _want me_ , I should have learned, then you show up and it takes us _years_ to — to act on — on _that_ , and then you leave me like that, I should _know_ that the idea of someone wanting me is… completely ridiculous.” She pauses, shaves a bit more hair. She can see his cheeks properly now. They’re gaunt. “I imagine your sister had a last laugh,” she shakes her head. “And then I show up here and you only let _me_ do this, and I know that it can’t be a coincidence.”

She stops again, willing her fingers to not shake.

“ _Why_ , damn you?”

*

_“Gods,” Brienne says, turning his face over in her hands, “how long since you shaved?”_

_He shrugs. He thinks he doesn’t remember._

_“I don’t know,” he replies. “Is it that bad?”_

_“Well, yes,” she says, but she’s smiling down at him, like it’s not a_ problem _if it is._

_“I mean,” he says, “kind of hard to do it with one hand only. And I remember you doing it for me another time, didn’t you?”_

_“Oh,” she smiles back, her grin becoming broader, and when she takes his face in her hands he almost whines, pressing into her touch, gods he loves her hands, they’re large and rough and fit around his face perfectly and they touch him so so so gently all the time, “you want me to?”_

_“What if I did?” He replies, barely audible._

_“Guess I_ do _have a knife on me,” she says, taking it out of its sheath, and he’s only to glad to bare his throat for her._

_He couldn’t for anyone else, but for her, oh, for her he would, and he remembers how careful and gentle she had been in Harrenhal, and then she proceeds to do it and oh, it’s just as careful and gentle, and he stays still trying not to press into her touch too much._

_Gods, he missed her so much, so much —_

*

“Truly remarkable,” the maester says a while later, as he comes into the room while Brienne carefully moves a wet cloth over Jaime’s face, cleaning off any remaining hair.

Gods, he looks terrible.

“How exactly?” She sighs. “I didn’t… do anything.”

“He _let you do that_ ,” the maester shakes his head. “No one could. Not me, not his brother, nor anyone else who tried.”

“Do I want to know what it means?”

“Well,” the maester replies, “as I said, I have not… studied this kind of ailment, at the Citadel. But I do not think he would let you if he didn’t recognize you somehow.”

“I — I see,” Brienne nods, and the man leaves.

She looks down at Jaime, who is now laying back on the cushions, lips slack, unseeing eyes on the hand she has on the mattress. She slowly moves it upwards, to his neck. He kind of follows the motion, but — like someone who is asleep and not awake, if it makes even any sense to say.

When she runs her fingers through his hair, he presses into it.

She wants to cry.

“Brienne?”

“Tyrion,” she nods, and he walks into the room, sitting near the bed. He’s come in when he could, these last couple of days.

“I see he _did_ let you do it.”

“So it seems,” she agrees.

“You know,” he says after a long moment, “anyone else would _not_ have come.”

“I guess,” she says. “And I feel like a right idiot for it, but —” She stops, the words dying in her throat. She doesn’t know if she can be this vulnerable with anyone _again_ , but — but if she can with _anyone_ , she supposes it would be him. “I just couldn’t not,” she whispers. “Because — well. He hurt me,” she says.

“Of course he did,” Tyrion agrees, softly. “I wouldn’t presume to tell you otherwise.”

“And yet — and yet he’s — I _know_ there could be no one else after him. I just knew it in my bones. He was all I ever wanted,” she says, letting a few tears fall from her eyes. “And I just _couldn’t_ not go. I know I wasn’t what _he_ wanted more than anything else, and it’s — fine, I guess. I know. I would know. That’s just how it is. And yet…”

She smiles, shaking her head.

“And yet it didn’t matter. Pathetic, I guess.”

“I doubt it,” Tyrion says. “And _he_ was the right idiot, not you.”

She lets her fingers tangle with Jaime’s.

He doesn’t squeeze or anything, but he _lets_ her, and they’re soft and yielding in her grasp.

The way he used to be when she —

Gods.

This is _all_ wrong.

7\. _but your life was one long emergency_

“In his defense,” Tyrion says a while later, when she’s caressed Jaime’s fingers for that long and he hasn’t woken up or anything but has _let_ her and at some point turned his head towards her a tiny bit as if he was _looking_ for her even if he’s not seeing either of them for sure, “or well, not really, but… how much did he tell you exactly about our sweet sister?”

Brienne swallows heavily, a knot that tastes like bile forming in her throat.

“Some,” she says. “Probably not all. I mean, before — well. He just said they were the same person and he said they always were together, and that he never bedded anyone else, I think, when Lady Catelyn got him drunk and asked him. After — well. He _did_ say something. Very much late at night and not in detail. I only gathered that it took… a lot for him to decide to leave her behind. And then — well. He said they were equally hateful and left me in that yard.”

“Fucking idiot,” Tyrion says again, and then, “listen, I — at this point I think it hardly matters. That he’d kill me for saying what I’m about to say. And it doesn’t excuse his actions or anything, but — that thing you said. That they were the same person.”

“Yes?”

“It was _Cersei_ ’s thing. I mean, he always _believed_ it up to a point, but I remember enough from when they were young and _I_ was young that he never described whatever they were to each other in terms _she_ hadn’t come up first. And for what matters, he always believed her when she told him he was _the stupidest of us all_ , what a crock of bullshit.”

“… He didn’t use those terms first,” Brienne says, her fingers stopping their motions.

“No,” Tyrion shakes his head. “And — well. He told you he only ever slept with her.”

“He did.”

“ _She_ didn’t, not counting Robert,” Tyrion says. “Starting with our cousin Lancel and… well. She never told him, obviously. But he was somehow convinced she wanted him in the same way _he_ did, and… I mean, he said _they were the same person_.”

“And that they were equally hateful.”

“Well, have you ever seen him lust for power?” Tyrion half-laughs, and that’s when Brienne realizes what he’s getting at.

“No,” she shakes her head. “He could have taken the throne, for that matter. When —”

“When he killed Aerys. Indeed. And Father was very disappointed in it, but — never mind. He never did. He was… the only person who _loved_ me, growing up. I know I wouldn’t have survived if not for him. And — well. My sister only ever wanted my head.”

Brienne doesn’t ask him how anyone could want _their brother’s_ head. She thinks she has an inkling, and from what Sansa told her about Cersei Lannister… it does add up.

“ _He_ didn’t. He fucking set me free when I’m sure she wanted him to kill me,” he sighs. “He — he _always_ was the goddamned opposite of our sister, and _he couldn’t see it_.”

Brienne swallows. It’s — it makes sense. “But how — how could he _believe_ that, then?”

“I suppose,” Tyrion says, “he never really heard different from anyone else and he thought he loved her. For one, I know he _did_ resent that he never got to be close to his children… and who think prevented him from it?”

“… Cersei?” Brienne’s throat feels dry.

Very, very dry.

She keeps her hands where they are.

“Who else? He always pretended he didn’t care. Well. He _did_ , he just… didn’t let himself think about it.” He stops. “It was _all his life_ , Lady Brienne,” he finally says. “I was… honestly surprised that he had the guts to leave her when he showed up in Winterfell. And when I realized it also had been _for you_ , well… I dared hope that even if she had poisoned him for years he had started, uh, purging that.”

“I suppose he didn’t,” Brienne says, but it sounds more sad than angry.

“No, I imagine,” Tyrion agrees, “but it’s… a _lot_ that he had started. I suppose that a month with you wasn’t enough to undo years with her, but you could also see that as… well, that he cared for you enough to leave in the first place.”

Oh.

 _Oh_.

She supposes it’s one way to look at it, but —

“He still hurt me,” she says, but it’s more feeble than she’d like.

“Far from me to imply otherwise. But if it consoles you, the last time I tried to touch his face he about shrank back in a second. He’s not doing it with _you_. Whatever is wrong with him, I _think_ that you should take that into consideration.”

“I understand,” she says, and she _does._ “And — thank you for telling me. It _was_ … well. It explained, I suppose.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Tyrion says, hopping down from the chair and awkwardly patting her arm before heading back for the door, “for not having been enough or whatever. I can see it. You could not have fixed an entire lifetime of _my fucking sister_ in a month. Believe me, I lived with her. No one could have.”

He nods, and leaves — he has duties, of course he would.

Brienne looks at Jaime again. His face hasn’t changed expression, his eyes are still dull and unseeing, but his head is falling forward, slightly —

She lets it touch her shoulder.

She thinks he sighs, in the _good_ way.

“Good gods,” she whispers, a hand traitorously moving to the back of his hand, touching hair that also might need a trim, “you could have said, you know?”

*

_What did she just ask?_

_“Sorry,” he says, moving his head from Brienne’s shoulder, blinking at her. “I could have said what?”_

_“I didn’t speak,” she says, kissing the side of his head, moving down next to him on the empty side of the bed, kicking off her boots. “But you can tell me anything. You know that, don’t you?”_

_He does._

_Oh, he does._

_One day he_ will _tell her about Cersei, he will soon because he can’t shake that dream from his back —_

_But not now. Now he just wants to let her hold him and bask in her presence and kiss her some more._

_They do have all the time in the world, right?_

8\. _reveal yourself all now to me, girl, while you've got the strength to speak_

“I should _hate_ you. You _know_ that, gods, if you were awake you would probably tell me the same. You _did_ want me to hate you, you fucking — I can’t even bring myself to call you names, how bloody pathetic is that? I can’t — I can’t believe that it’s the dead of the night and I had my perfectly serviceable rooms and then I could not sleep and now I’m _here_ because even seeing you like _this_ is better than not having you nearby at all?”

“Seven Hells, I shouldn’t — I shouldn’t even be here, you don’t even know I’m here or if you do you cannot say if you want me to be, and instead I’m — I’m sitting here on this damned bed and I’m wondering what would happen if I kissed you or if I laid down next to you and I feel like the stupid girl I thought I wasn’t anymore. I thought I was over songs, you know? I thought I was over them with Renly and then you showed up and you made me _like_ you and you _knighted me_ and now the bloody Queen asked me to be in _her Queensguard_ and I told her no because maybe it could have been my dream when _guarding_ Renly was the most I could ask for, and then you showed me that no, I could — I could have knighthood and I could have _you_ and maybe I only did for a month but I can’t forget it and I know that you weren’t pretending. Gods, I know you weren’t.”

“Do you think I couldn’t say if you _lied_? You always were bad at lying to _me_ , even when we hated each other. Do you think I wouldn’t _know_ if you didn’t really want what we had? Gods, I spent my life wasting after people who only thought I was a commodity, do you think I wouldn’t have known if I was the same to you? I hated believing that, I hated thinking I might have been, and then your brother sends me that raven and now you’re — you’re _letting me touch you_ and you seem to _like it_ as much as you can show it, and I have to assume that month meant nothing? I don’t think so, Jaime Lannister, and you _know_ it, and I just wish you had talked to me _once_ , I wish I had known how bad it was because I wouldn’t have let you leave otherwise and you _knew_ that too, didn’t you? I wish I could call you an idiot and then I remember what your brother told me and — how does anyone tell _you_ that you’re _the stupidest_ person when they’d have let the world burn as long as they could hold on to that piece of iron?”

“This is fucking useless. You aren’t hearing me. You can’t. And I can’t stay away and I wish I would but at the same time I feel horrible for wishing I wouldn’t because I’d rather know you’re alive somehow than dead with your fucking sister under a pile of bricks, and hear me out here, I spent years trying to tell myself that being envious of beautiful women was useless and now I just wish I could have talked to her once just to tell her she never deserved you and that you deserved better than her. I can’t even tell you to come back because what right do I have to ask that of you? You forfeited all when you left me. And I still can’t hate you for it. She would say I was pathetic, wouldn’t she?”

“Wouldn’t she?”

“Gods, this is — come back, Jaime, _please_ do it, I can’t see you like this. You _know_ I can’t. And you don’t even know that — I’ve tried to not even think about it, but —”

—

—

—

_“Are you sure that you don’t… miss her?” Brienne asks quietly, later._

_Jaime, who is still not thinking straight because of how hard he came inside her, blinks and shakes his head._

_“Miss who?”_

_“Your sister, Jaime,” Brienne says, sounding bitter. “She told me — she told me once that I loved you when I still didn’t know,” she adds, “during Joffrey’s wedding, and she sounded like she thought I was pathetic for it, and I didn’t know, not yet, but —”_

_“Brienne,” he blurts, shaking his head, grasping her shoulders, “she might, but she doesn’t know anything. I’m here because I want_ you _, I left because I couldn’t be with her anymore, I realized that she wasn’t who I thought she was,_ please _believe me when I say that I don’t even think about her if I’m with you.”_

 _“Really?” She asks, blue eyes brimming with tears, but_ happy _ones._

_“Of course,” he says, and he kisses her again, and she surges into it, and he can’t even remember how kissing Cersei felt like, he just knows it didn’t feel as good as this._

_He just does._

9\. _I could give it all to you now, if only you could ask_

The light of the dawn is coming in from the window when Brienne opens her eyes.

She has no idea if Jaime is sleeping or not, but — he has his eyes closed, and he had a hand on her hip — lax, if she moved his wrist away he wouldn’t hold on to it, hair falling over his forehead. He also smells like he needs a _proper_ bath — Tyrion _did_ tell her that he wouldn’t let anyone else touch him in order to put him into a tub either —, and he’s breathing in slowly, and if she tries to forget for a moment that they’re in King’s Landing and when he opens his eyes he won’t see her, not really, she could almost trick herself into believing they’re… back in Winterfell and he’ll wake up and smile at her like he can’t believe they could wake up next to each other.

 _I never could, with — with her_ , he would say, _until the end, but that wasn’t — that felt — never mind_ , he would trail away, and he would kiss her again.

She regrets not asking, but then again, she… didn’t particularly want to hear anything about Cersei Lannister.

What a jape.

A _knight of the Seven Kingdoms_ , and she couldn’t handle —

She sighs, curling closer regardless — she _knows_ she will try to get him to bathe at some point.

She has a feeling he _will_ let her.

She moves a hand to the side of his face, brushing back his hair. He says nothing but seems to press into it, a tiny bit.

“How ridiculous is it,” she whispers, “that if you woke up right now and asked me to forgive you, I — I just might do that, even if I know I shouldn’t?”

He doesn’t answer. Of course he doesn’t.

“I hate it so much,” she whispers, “that you had me swore those vows and you fucking _knighted_ me and now I can’t do anything either way. You had no right, you know? I should hate you for it. I _should_. And I still don’t and I’m thinking about whether you’ll let me wash your hair. What does it even say about me?”

She thinks she _can_ admit that out loud at this point. Maybe it will hurt her less later.

*

_“Not to accuse you of anything, but how long have you been here?” She asks him._

_It’s not the first time she does._

_“I don’t know,” he replies, sincerely. “I just… didn’t feel like going anywhere. Why?”_

_“Well, you_ could _use a bath.”_

 _The moment she says it, he realizes that she has a point. He doesn’t even remember when he last got out of bed to relieve himself, thought he must have done it. He_ does _smell like he hasn’t bathed in a while._

_“Do you want to call one here?”_

_“There are perfectly serviceable underground springs in Winterfell,” she replies, a hand moving his dirty hair away from his face. “No one says we cannot use them.”_

_“What,” he grins back, “should we do what happened in Harrenhal, just with me being actually aware and not half-dead and you not hating my guts?”_

_“I didn’t hate your guts at that point,” she nods, “but yes, that was the point. How about that?”_

_“Who am I to say no to such a lovely proposal?” He replies, and then kisses her again, it’s not like they’re in a hurry —_

_—_

_—_

He doesn’t answer her, of course.

Not like she expected it.

She closes his eyes and decides that at this point, as pathetic as it is, she _can_ let herself pretend that nothing has changed since Winterfell for another handful of minutes.

10\. _It's not your lungs this time, it's your heart that holds your fate_

“Would my lady and my lord want the good news first or the bad ones?” Samwell Tarly says a couple of days later, outside Jaime’s door.

Brienne can _hear_ how tired Tyrion is just by how he breathes in before answering. “For a change, good first. I mean, I’m surprised there are good news in the first place.”

“Fine by me,” she agrees. She doesn’t quite look at Sam in the eyes.

“The good news is that physically… he’s fine. Well, those wounds are on the mend and even if he could eat more even if he goes on like this for a while he will live. Though I suppose he _could_ do with a bath already, though he certainly won’t let _me_ do it.”

Doesn’t Brienne know _that_. She has postponed the inevitabile for a while, but — _but_.

It’s obvious no one else can do that one job.

“The bad?” Tyrion asks.

“The bad is that… well. Whatever is holding him back… is not _physical_. It’s not an ailment I studied in depth at the Citadel either, but at the end of it considering how he reacts _specifically_ to… the lady and everyone else, it’s obvious it’s not a case of… brainstorm and the likes. Because he would react equally to anyone, if it were. So… well. I don’t know exactly what is going on, but I think it’s up to him, not… external circumstances.”

… Isn’t that _excellent_ news.

“Thank you,” Tyrion says, “I suppose this could be… worse news. Are you coming back with me? I think Jon said he needed to talk to you.”

“In a moment,” Sam says, “I think I should talk to the lady first.”

Tyrion doesn’t push it and tells Sam they will see each other later, then turns his back at them and leaves, disappearing in the hallway.

Brienne, who knows why Sam wants to talk to her, nods towards the room.

That’s… well. No point in doing it outside.

She will have to discuss it at some point.

“So,” Sam says as they sit on two chairs, far from the bed, “how are _you_ doing?”

“Fine,” she replies at once.

“ _Brienne_ ,” Sam says, “you rode to King’s Landing and arrived days before us and we did a decent time. You did _better_. You also have hard a not really good time since he left and everyone in Winterfell knew. And you had just stopped throwing up every single morning when you received that raven, and I do not think that you can tell yourself it’s not happening for much longer, so, again: _how are you doing_?”

She glances at Jaime.

Then back at Sam.

“Well.” She knows Sam is right.

She just doesn’t particularly want to _think about it._ “My moon blood hasn’t come back as we all presumed, I have been… well, I suppose. I didn’t throw up anymore. It’s not showing yet, I suppose, and I might have been craving fish that I cannot find anywhere but Tarth, but other than that… it’s fine.”

Sam narrows his eyes. “Brienne, before you left you asked me how long you had to decide whether you wanted me or Gilly to help you get rid of it or not, excuse me if I do _not_ believe you’re _fine_.”

Brienne really, _really_ wishes he didn’t have the right of it.

“I don’t know,” she finally says. “I didn’t know he was alive when I asked, I didn’t know — I _didn’t know anything_ , and now — if he never wakes up it could be the only thing of him I have left, but I don’t think I want to have it on my own. Does that satisfy you?”

Sam nods at her, then stands up. “As an answer, yes. _Specifically_ , it concerns me for _your_ well-being, but I think you have about another moon to decide if you want to keep it. Think about it, I suppose.”

“Of course,” she says, and watches him leave.

Then she forces herself to stand up and moves on to the other side of Jaime’s bed, laying down on it, even if she knows it’s useless. He’s on his side, eyes open. He’s not looking at her.

As usual. She grabs his hand and he lets her, of course, and she feels like crying when she moves his fingers over her stomach.

“You know,” she whispers, “that’s not how I wanted to tell you.”

She doesn’t know if she wants to say it out loud to anyone else. She hasn’t even told Sam now and she hadn’t dared tell anyone since Sam confirmed her that indeed she _was_ expecting.

But —

“Gods,” she breathes, so low only _he_ could hear her, if he… well. If he was awake. “You _should_ know that I _am_ with child and that it’s yours and that I don’t know if I want it if you’re not there to raise it with me. But that’s beside the point now,” she goes on, her eyes burning, wishing she could _not_ cry. “Jaime, I _can’t_ do this if you’re not there for it. If you should hear anything I’ve told you since now, _hear this_.”

He says nothing.

He doesn’t even open his eyes.

Of course he doesn’t.

*

_“I was late today for a reason,” Brienne whispers in his ear later, room engulfed in darkness, his back against her chest._

_“Were you? And can I know that?” Jaime replies, trying to not fall asleep again even if he feels like it, like it’s calling to him. He hasn’t left this bed in so long, he shouldn’t… but he still does._

_“I felt… unwell,” she says, “and my moon blood was late, so… I went to see Sam.”_

_Jaime immediately feels like he couldn’t be more awake if he tried. He turns over in her arms._

_“Brienne —”_

_“I am with child,” she says, smiling, barely, but_ there _, “and it’s yours and I don’t know if I want it if you’re not there to raise it with me.”_

_Oh._

Oh _._

 _Jaime feels like the ground opened under his feet, and for a moment he wants to ask,_ then I should leave now _, and then he realizes he doesn’t have to, and then he’s weeping before he can control it and he’s kissing her without letting her say anything else and he whispers_ yes yes yes of course I want it with you I couldn’t want it with anyone else _, and he thinks that maybe he will get to hold him or her this time, and then he’s kissing her again while she wipes away his tears and he’s never felt happier in his life, he never has —_

_—_

_—_

*

Brienne shakes her head as suddenly Jaime’s eyes open a tiny bit more and tears start falling from them.

They’re still dull and unfocused.

He’s not seeing her.

And he’s crying.

She wishes she knows what is going on, but she can’t and he won’t answer if she asks, and so she bites down on her lip as she carefully wipes them away with her fingers, and she hates how he might have fucking knighted her but she can’t do a single thing for either of them _now_.

She doesn’t think she will tell anyone else until it starts to show and she’ll forbid Sam from doing it, too.

It really hurts too damn much.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIGHT SO, HAVE THE ALMOST FINAL PART OF ANNIVERSARY SPITEFIC OF DOOM! heed the new tags, also the chapter numbers changed because I decided it needed a small extra epilogue tomorrow for the extra fluff but it didn't really want to work with the main story and the bulk of it is here, so... have fun and have at it, see you in two days maximum with the proper epilogue and the fluff I couldn't fit 100% in the last section ;) ;)
> 
> also: for reasons I ended up using one book character AND we're presuming that the road trip in the riverlands/the bear pit went like they did in book canon because I said so. /o\

11\. _I swear I was never that way, even when I really cracked_

Unsurprisingly, he _does_ let her bring him to the baths.

Brienne never thought she would _miss_ Harrenhal, and here she is, wishing that they were back _there_ — at least he was… there for it, she supposes. Maybe he had stayed silent after he fainted, and merely let her go about her business, but he had been… well. _There_.

Now… _now_. She’s plenty glad that the baths in the Red Keep haven’t been destroyed because at least it means there’s a hot tub large enough for both of them and she doesn’t have to move around a smaller one, and so she sat him down on one of the slab of stones on the sides and proceeded to wash old sweat off his face and shoulders first.

He lets her. Of course he _does_. At some point she sits behind him and his head falls backwards against her shoulder as she runs a soaped up rag across his chest, careful to not jostle too much the tender scarred skin on his side — thankfully his wrist is fine and his leg is supposedly healed, so she just has to be careful. She _hates_ how he’s obviously not… _seeing_ her but at the same time searching for her touch, and she can’t help wondering _why_ all over again.

She goes through his chest and sides and back, hating to see that he _has_ lost too much muscle, and — at some point she thinks he’s smiling very faintly and she decides she’s making it up.

She _has_ to be making it up.

If she’s not —

No, she’s _not_ considering that now.

She finds a better position to worry about his hair and starts lathering soap in it — it’s still as soft and silky golden blond she remembers and that haunted her dreams and nightmares until now, and it’s longer, of course, and it takes her three tries to get rid of all the damned grime in it. Well, there was still dust from the damned Red Keep in it, most likely. It only makes sense. It falls on his shoulders after, sticking to his skin that at least looks… a healthy shade now. Not tan covered in grime.

The water around them is filthy.

Of course it is.

“You know,” she says, knowing he won’t reply, “the last time we were in such a place, at least you were talking. I thought you were about to faint and for a moment I thought you had died and that story was the last thing I expected to hear, but… in comparison to now? I’d take it. All over.”

No answer. Of course.

She sighs, quickly scrubbing herself clean before hauling him out gently — she had towels ready on the ground so she could get the both of them dried off and dress him again with clean things… that _she_ brought over from Winterfell.

Gods, she really is hopeless, isn’t she?

“Where did you go?” She asks, dejectedly.

It’s not like he will answer that, either.

*

_“This is so much better than Harrenhal,” he says with a sigh as Brienne runs her fingers through the hair on his scalp, lathering it in soap._

_“Oh, is it,” she says, and he can’t see her but he can_ feel _her smiling._

_“Sure,” he goes on, “I’m well now, I’m not half-dying, I don’t feel like fainting every other moment, my wrist isn’t hurting anymore, and I’m not lying to myself about how much I want you, so of course it’s so much better.”_

_“I see it,” she says, rinsing his hair with warm water before she leans down and kisses the crown of his head and then slides next to him, her hand finding his cheek again, leaning closer. “Well, I like you better like_ this _, too.”_

_“I like myself better as well,” he admits quietly before he claims her mouth again._

_He doesn’t think he ever wants to leave_.

*

“And he’s _smiling_ now,” Brienne mutters a while later, after she has tied a fresh shirt on him. He _is_ , now she can’t lie to himself about it that much longer, and when she cups his face he smiles a bit wider.

Gods.

 _Would he wake up if I kissed him_ , she thinks, and then puts that out of her head.

She has no right, _he_ forfeited that right and — he can’t say no, regardless. She _wouldn’t_.

“Where did you even go, for —” She starts, and then —

 _Wait a moment_ , she thinks, _what did he tell me when the Bloody Mummers wanted to —_

_When they tried to —_

Oh.

 _Oh_ , she’s a right damned idiot, of course he _would_ , the fucking —

She breathes in, gets herself under control, gently hoists him up. His head nestles against her collarbone.

She needs to put him back to bed, _then_ to get Sam.

Maybe if she figured it out they _can_ do… something about it.

Hopefully.

12\. _you could laugh and cry in a single sound_

“How did you say he called it?” Sam asks, glancing at Jaime’s still form on the bed.

“Going away inside,” she repeats. “He just — said that when they took me I should just… think about something else. Something I liked, I suppose. He said… being on Tarth or Renly. Actually… he said _let them have the meat and go away inside_ , literally. Does that help?”

“ _Maybe_ ,” Sam says, “but if it’s what I’m thinking of… good gods. Well, that… would… explain it, actually.”

“Care to inform me, too?” Brienne asks, wishing she didn’t feel _hopeful_ now. “Because I would really like to understand.”

“… What if I think Lord Tyrion might want to hear that, too?”

Brienne nods. “I… will get him, then.”

She gets him, thankfully he was only checking ravens in his own room, and she can see how hopeful he looks as they hurry their way back to Jaime’s room… and she wishes she _could_ stop feeling like that, too. She has a feeling it _won’t_ go over well.

When they come back, the situation is of course unchanged, and Sam is sitting at the table. They both take the two other chairs wordlessly.

“So?” Tyrion asks. “Did you figure that out?”

“Maybe,” Sam says. “Of course, no one can be sure of it, but… in the Citadel, at some point we _did_ go over ailments that take soldiers after they come back from wars. Or _during_ wars. It’s… not unheard of that some of them might hate it so much or might be reminded of it later and equally detest it that they… wish themselves somewhere else. The people I read about wished they were back with their wives or in their childhood homes and such things. Now… the lady says that at some point while on the road to King’s Landing their captors threatened to… violate her.”

She nods.

Tyrion looks three shades paler.

“He told me… do something along those lines and go away inside, yes. I pretty much said I would do no such thing but I also had no idea what he was talking about — _oh_.”

“I think you both guessed what I was hinting,” Sam says, worrying his hands. “So, uh. I can _imagine_ that’s what he did — what he’s _doing_ , but that… poses two more issues.”

“Go ahead,” Tyrion says. “We won’t like it, will we?”

“… Probably not. So, uh. Usually — these… states. They’re temporary. They can last a long time, but… we are discussing hours. I have never heard of someone… doing such a thing for _weeks_. So, we have to presume a few things. I’m… well. I can’t _know_ for sure. But. The first thing, is that he must have done it… very often, if now he’s… like that.”

Tyrion looks like he will throw up.

Brienne thinks she might, and not because of _his child_.

“The other… well. He must have been doing that _before_ the ceiling fell.”

“All things considered,” Tyrion whispers, “he _did_ sound… detached, when we were… when I sent him off.”

“If he was doing that _even then_ , well. It might be that he’s… in too deep now. This, if I’m right. But. This is the part I think you won’t like, my lady. Or maybe that you _could_ , but… well.”

“Sam, just _say_ it,” she cuts him off. “I can’t — I can’t do this much longer.”

He sighs. “He doesn’t respond positively to anyone but _you_.”

“And so?”

“So… if I am right and he’s picturing… being somewhere he _wants_ to be and reacts to you, _who_ do you think he’s assuming he’s with?”

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Brienne thinks she’s really going to vomit, and then she looks at Tyrion and the way he’s staring at her is so sympathetic that she can’t handle it.

“I — I need a moment,” she says, suddenly remembering how he had sounded like he was laughing _and_ crying at the same time when he shouted _sapphires_ , and how he sounded like that whenever he spoke while they were being dragged along the Riverlands, and oh she hasn’t heard him laugh since the night he left, because he _did_ when they fucked before he —

She stands up and runs out of the room.

She can’t do this now.

She can’t.

*

_Brienne said she would see Sam, so she’s not in today, which — well. As much as he wants to be with her, if she’s with child of course she would see him more often. He stands up from the bed for the first time in — he doesn’t remember how long. That’s probably bad._

_That doesn’t matter, though._

_He opens the window, figuring he’ll breathe some fresh air. It’s cold outside, but it’s — nice, he decides. He hasn’t breathed fresh air in so long, and who minds if it’s cold?_

_Gods._

_He’s — they’re — she —_

_She’s pregnant with_ his _child, and just thinking about it makes him smile hard enough it hurts, so why are his eyes burning?_

_Why?_

_He doesn’t even wipe at what is most likely tears falling all over his face._

_He supposes it was time it happened._

_It’s no matter. She’ll make it better when she’s back._

13\. _your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds_

“You’re _something_ , that’s for fucking sure,” Brienne says later, a long time later, sitting next to Jaime — he’s still lying down and no one wiped away what looks like tear tracks on his face. She shakes her head, wets a cloth in a nearby basin and then pulls him to a sitting position — he lets her, of course.

She starts wiping his face clean. Of course he presses into it.

“I mean, here I am, with all the reason to assume you’re a right bastard, and then you’re like _this_ after surviving a ceiling falling on your head, which — never mind _that_ , and now most likely you’re — _somewhere_ else and it seems like _I_ am there and you somehow were thinking about _that_ from before that fucking roof fell on your head.” She shakes her head, moving down to his neck and collarbone. His head falls against her shoulder. He’s so close she can feel his breath on her skin.

She wants to leave and she wants to not move at all and —

And —

“How am I fucking supposed to stay mad at you when if Sam is right you were already wishing you were — with _me_ before — _before_. You could have just bloody stayed, though,” she whispers, feeling whatever rage she had left blow away.

He doesn’t answer as she cleans off the back of his neck.

He curls closer instead.

“You could have just stayed, but I guess you couldn’t help it, you self-sacrificing idiot,” she sighs, and then — she shouldn’t, gods she shouldn’t, but it’s _too much_ and she — she puts the cloth away and reaches at his back with both her arms, pulling him against her, a hand going to his hair the way it used to back in Winterfell.

His heartbeat is… as it should be. He’s breathing regularly. Almost as if he was sleeping. She knows he’s _not_ , he had his eyes open before, not that he was looking at her.

“Come back,” she whispers, holding on to him tighter. “Come back and — gods, I don’t think I could stay angry at you. Wherever you are, just… please. I don’t even care that I’m begging you now. _Come back_.”

He says nothing. Of course he does. She thinks he’s smiling a tiny bit against her neck.

 _Where did you go?_ , she doesn’t ask.

*

_She’s warm, he thinks as she holds him close and tells him that Sam said she’s —_ they _are all right, and he apologizes because he doesn’t know why he’s crying but she says she knows and that he can’t always be a self-sacrificing idiot and that he doesn’t need to do that anymore and he can have this, and he can barely believe it when she tells him but he wants to believe her, he wants to believe her so much —_

_He drags her head down, kissing her, moaning into her mouth, smiling into it._

_How could he ever even consider going back to King’s Landing, even just in that dream?_

14\. _remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the God?_

_“I’m sorry I had you wait this long,” Jaime tells her later — they’re back under the furs, his head on her thigh, his hand splayed over her stomach. She still isn’t showing, of course, but he thinks of all the times he could never touch when it was Cersei having_ his _damned children, and so what if he can’t wait to finally be able to? And she had been gone so long before, because Sam had to check on her again, he started getting antsy and when she was back he just — couldn’t not tell her._

_“For what?” Brienne asks._

_He shrugs. “I mean, I think I knew for sure in the tent. When I told you that sword would always be yours, I wasn’t really talking about_ the sword _. Though I suppose that it wasn’t too clear. But I could have known when I let you go in King’s Landing. That doesn’t matter, though. I… I knew in the tent and I let you run off and I didn’t say anything, and I refused to see how things were when she blew up that sept, and then it still took not dying while we fought the Others to make a move, and… well. We could have had this a long time ago. And I kept you waiting.”_

_She says nothing for a while, her mouth pressing close to the side of his head._

_“Maybe, but I don’t know if_ I _would have been ready either. I think I knew that you wouldn’t… refuse me when you knighted me, but I don’t know if I would have believed it before. But why should we think about how it could have gone when things are good_ now _?”_

_“Good point,” he says, and so he kisses her once, and then again, and again, and when she presses him down into the mattress he decides that she’s right._

_He hates he kept her waiting and he hates that he didn’t realize what he wanted before, but he has now._

_No point in thinking about other ways it could have gone_.

*

“Sometimes I wonder if I should have just… told you,” she sighs.

It’s been a month and a half.

She’s stopped pretending she uses her rooms.

Oh, she’s not here _all the time_ , but at this point it’s clear that she’s not leaving, and she told Sam that however it goes she’s not going to get rid of a child that _could_ in fact be the last she has left of him if he never comes back from wherever he is right now, so that’s — that’s decided, and she felt lighter for it.

She wrote Sansa and said that she’s not coming back for the foreseeable future after somehow Jon and Tyrion manage to settle things — the Queen won’t let the North have independence, but at the end of it she and Jon _are_ marrying after all, so that… doesn’t really matter, Brienne supposes. The wedding should be in Winterfell as a compromise and to make sure any lingering hostilities are solved (along with Arya Stark’s and Gendry Waters’, the youngest Stark apparently re-thought his proposal and so it was decided to have all the weddings in subsequent days), and the answer she got had been… courteous, but it was obvious that according to Sansa she was wasting time after someone who did nothing to deserve it.

Brienne had written back that maybe it was the case but he still was the only man she ever could want and she couldn’t just leave until the situation changed.

Lady Catelyn once told her that Sansa was the kind of girl who’d dream about the romance of her life, and now it seems like she’s not that person anymore, and that _hurts_ , but… but Sansa is safe and sound at home now, and she has her brother and her sister and she can make what she wants out of her life, now. No one would force her to do otherwise, and she hardly needs _Brienne_ now.

 _Jaime_ , on the other side… well.

Whatever is the answer to what’s going on with him, it’s obvious he _does_ need her.

She _did_ try to not show up for a while. She told Tyrion she had to think about it and she couldn’t if she saw him every day, and he said that he perfectly understood it and would get someone else on his case and she could take a break.

She talked to the Queen, who seemed… better now than she had been when she arrived, she had talked to Jon who seemed a bit less tired, she had taken more than a stroll around the city, she had let Lord Davos buy her a few drinks and _talk_ because he said she looked like she needed it and she was so thankful for it she could have wept.

It lasted a whole week and then Tyrion showed up looking like he could use ten years of just _resting_ telling her that according to the maester he worsened in her absence because now he wouldn’t let anyone else even touch him unless they held him down, and they could barely manage to clean him up enough to preserve dignity _while_ holding him down, and she doesn’t have to change her mind but he thought she should know.

Part of her had said, _fuck him, let him suffer for it_.

It lasted… seconds, because gods, she hadn’t let him suffer for it as much as he could when they still hated each other or were supposed to be hating each other, how can she _now_ when she knows that whatever in the Seven Hells was going through his head he most likely didn’t… _want_ to hurt her, deep down?

She had stood up and told Tyrion to have them bring a tub in that room and she’d have thought about it and the moment _she_ touched him he had smiled ever so slightly and _let her_ , not a second of fighting her off.

There’s no point in denying the state of things now.

So… Sansa can think whatever she wants of her. She never let herself love anyone so much as she let herself love _him_ , and now she’ll deal with it, whatever it takes.

She looks down at him — his head is on her thigh and she’s running her fingers through his hair and months ago it could have been something that happened behind her door.

“I didn’t dare ask you anything more than what you were willing to tell me. Maybe I didn’t want to hear about your sister at all. Maybe if I did — you wouldn’t have gone as far. Maybe it was too late. It’s not like I can go back now, can I?”

He says nothing, of course.

He looks happy, though. As much as he can, like _this_. Because he looks the way he did _back in Winterfell_ , except that he’s thinner, and she should probably spend some time thinking about _why_ if she tries to feed him food he actually has to chew rather than swallow he _does_ it and if it’s anyone else he doesn’t.

She doesn’t know if she’s ready for that, though.

“I wish I had believed you could love me from before you knighted me, though,” she whispers. “I really wish I had.”

No answer comes.

She hadn’t been expecting different.

15\. _you were not quite half so proud when I found you broken on the beach_

It’s not like she can refuse it, if the Queen invites her for supper, and she can’t be with Jaime all the time either.

It doesn’t happen often, thankfully, and it… hurts a bit that Daenerys seems to be _understanding_ of her situation when Brienne obviously starts to show and her stomach swells and her shirts cannot cover the round curve of it anymore when the ravens she gets from Winterfell keep on telling her that she deserves better than — this.

Still, sometimes she does, and it’s the last supper she and Jon will have at court before they leave for Winterfell, and Tyrion, who has to go, too, of course, told her that he could stay with Jaime while she attended because it’s not as if he doesn’t have supper with them every day.

So she goes, and she’s not surprised to see that most others sitting at the table who aren’t Daenerys or Jon or Grey Worm look at her with distaste. She’s wearing a plain blue dress because she can’t stand breeches around her middle even if she’s not very far ahead, and of course everyone thinks dresses are not suited for her.

( _Jaime had told her that the blue one did suit her_ —)

Of course, they couldn’t leave her alone for the night — she’s at the middle of the table, and any other day she’d have rejoiced that Yara Greyjoy is on her right side, and she knows why they put them close… except that she’s ended up very deep in conversation with the Prince of Dorne sitting on _her_ right, and if Brienne is right they will end up in the same bed before the night is over, and they _should_. She won’t go meddling in it.

The problem is that the other side of the table is all… bannermen who had to bend the knee _after_ King’s Landing was taken. All people who had sided with Cersei, of course.

Including… well.

Smaller Houses who were once pledged to the Freys and now to the Tullys who had come to bend the knee, and she’s seated next to this lady Sybelle Westerling who has been only icy towards her all the time — her daughter, who is in front of Brienne, is actually lovely, has asked her about her knighthood and said nothing about Jaime and she’s trading stares with one of Doran Martell’s nephews sat next to her, so good for her. But the mother just… seems to glare at her every other moment, to the point that by the fourth course Brienne feels like throwing up and she can’t keep that in anymore.

And considering everything she went through, she thinks it won’t be this random woman ruining her evening more than it already is.

“My lady,” she says, icy, “do you have a problem with me? Because if you do, you can say it. I am a _knight_ , I would never react dishonorably.”

For a moment, the lady looks surprised. Then she shrugs, leveling her eyes to Brienne’s.

“Oh, I was merely wondering.”

“What about?”

“People talk. It’s interesting that the only reason a… _woman knight_ is lingering around court is not for glory or a place in the guard but for a man not even his family wants to hear anything about these days. Bar his brother, of course.”

Brienne takes a deep breath, pulling her knife down. “Well,” she says, “too bad that it is _my_ business now.”

“Of course, of course.” She sounds so false, Brienne just wants her to shut up. “Seems a bit like a waste of time, though.”

“Does it,” Brienne says. “I still would like to point out it’s my business only. But I suppose I should want to know what it is that _people talk about_.”

It’s remarkable how the woman doesn’t seem to perceive that Brienne is really, _really_ done with this conversation.

“Oh, you do know, servants and maids and whatnot. They do discuss… the condition he’s in.”

Brienne really wants to stab something right now.

“And one merely wonders if the first woman knight the realm has ever seen should busy herself with such menial tasks as —”

“My lady, if this is your roundabout way of _not_ asking if I find it humiliating to be in the position I am while I’m also carrying _his_ child and this entire court knows why he’s in _his conditions_ , the answer is _no_.” She’s vaguely aware she’s raised her voice, but gods, she can’t dance this dance anymore. “Just in case you’re interested, after the bandits who _kidnapped us_ in the Riverlands cut off his hand and I wouldn’t have conceived _carrying his child_ in a million years, I didn’t even think about protesting when they said I was on cleaning shit up duty, because _no one deserved that_ , and he still found it in himself to prevent them from raping me while he was half-delirious, and — we had a story, a _long_ one, and whatever he did to me _now_ , no other man did anything _for_ me as much as him, and oh, wait, _he actually bloody knighted me_ and I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to do it, so how about you worry about your own business and let me eat in peace? It’s _my_ business whether I still care for him or not, and I _do_ , and it’s not up to you or anyone else to lecture me about it. Also, I swore Catelyn Tully a vow to see him safe a long time ago and I’m a knight, am I not? You can tell whoever else is gossiping about him or me that if I ever cared about what others thought of me, I wouldn’t have arrived this far. _Thank you_.”

Then she stands up, realizing that the entire table heard them by now. “Your Grace. With permission, I think I am quite done.”

“Of course, Ser,” Daenerys says, and her eyes narrow as she looks at Lady Sybelle.

Too bad for her, Brienne decides.

She’s done.

—

She’s in front of her door when Daenerys shows up behind her before she can open it.

“Ser,” she says.

“Your Grace,” she bows. “I… apologize for that scene. But — I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“Oh, I just wanted to tell you that you absolutely should have done it. That woman is a viper. And considering that I have lost _three_ children yet, I can see why you wouldn’t want to lose yours. I still don't know about _him_ , but — his brother _did_ tell me about my father.”

“Oh,” Brienne says, trying to not sound too hopeful. “And —”

“I suppose,” she says, “that all things considered I would not want his head for that anymore. I do hope he comes back to you, my lady. For your sake more than his, but _you_ certainly have not tried to stab me in the back and _you_ have not done anything that would make me wish you harm. From… one woman who had to fight to get where she is to another.”

“Thank you,” Brienne says, her voice choked. “I, uh, I would, if —”

“Of course,” Daenerys says. “Are you sure you do not want to come to Winterfell?”

“Could I bring him?”

Daenerys does smile a tiny bit. “No,” she agrees. “No, I suppose not. Best of luck, then.”

Brienne nods and watches her go, then slips inside the room.

There’s just a few candles burning. She left Jaime in night clothing before she left and he’s still there, hand clutching the other side of the blanket covering the bed, the part where _she_ usually sleeps.

He has his eyes closed, same as they were before she left.

She slips off her boots, thankful that she’s not showing enough that she can still rest on her side comfortably, and gently moves him so that he’s under the covers rather than on top of them, then she changes into her own night clothes and slips under the covers, too.

At this point she’s stopped feeling guilty about the touching, as much as he can’t say no… because technically he _does_ say no to everyone else, just not with words. She puts a hand on his cheek, kisses his forehead and pulls him to her, hating how he just goes with it when this morning the moment the maester tried to check if he could focus his pupils he’d jerk his head off his grasp at any point.

His hand delicately grasps the back of her shirt.

It’s nothing new, he’s been doing it for a while.

“Not to be that person,” she finally blurts, “but whatever reason it is you’re not coming back… it’s not like I would judge you or anything at this point. I _did_ see you at your worst. This might not even be it. At least you’re not trying to die now.”

He doesn’t answer.

She closes her eyes and pretends that he’ll wake up in the morning.

*

_He doesn’t know why he keeps on dreaming about being with Cersei_ again _except that every time she touches him he wants to hurl and he tries to get her off him but it doesn’t work, it never works, until he wakes up and finds out that Brienne is on the other side of the bed looking at him with concern and a raised arm, and he can only breathe after he presses up against her and pulls him closer._

_She’s showing now, not much but enough that her stomach swells and her shirts don’t hide it anymore and she never asks him what’s wrong._

_If he says that she deserves better, she’ll just reply that she_ has _seen him at his best and worst and doesn’t care about it regardless and at least he’s not trying to die now._

_“But I did,” he whispers sometimes. “In that dream when I left you.”_

_“Well,” she replies, shrugging, and is her hair just a bit longer now?, “then it’s a good thing that never happened now, isn’t it?”_

_She’s right._

_It never happened._

_Then_ why _can’t he seem to shake it away, as close and warm and loving she is?_

16\. _(I poured salt on your tongue and hung just out of reach)_

Brienne has just finished eating a honeycake to finish off the lunch that she’s having — as usual — at the table in what’s _their_ room at this point, not that she doesn’t wish it was under other circumstances, when she feels the child moving for the first time.

It’s also the beginning of month five, she _definitely_ is showing by now, and she has to stay on her back on the bed and she hates that she feels like she gets tired so soon, and on top of that half of the court is still in the North — Tyrion wrote that the nuptials went well, both of them, and Sansa is… well, fine although not too pleased, but they won’t be back for a long time, she knows, and the situation hasn’t changed otherwise.

For a moment she thinks she made it up.

Then it happens _again_.

Oh.

She puts a hand on her stomach, and —

It happens a third time.

It’s not strong, but it’s definitely _there_ , and she has to wipe away a few tears and gods now she really feels like eating another _ten_ damned honey cakes when she doesn’t even like honey that much, and gods this child definitely took after both of them if they’re kicking so much this early —

Wait.

She doesn’t —

She doesn’t even presume that it might work, _but_ —

She stands up, makes her way towards the bed. Jaime is… somehow awake, in the sense that his eyes are wide open but still unseeing.

She doubts it’s going to work, but —

She sits down, gently grabs his wrist, places his palm on her stomach, in the exact same point hers had been before.

For a long moment nothing happens — of course it wouldn’t, maybe it won’t happen for a while yet —

A moment later, there’s a kick. Just one, but the moment it happens Jaime’s hand actually _presses_ against her stomach before he moves it back as if he was burned.

Oh.

 _Oh_ , that was — that was more of a reaction than anything she’s seen from him lately, wasn’t it, but when she reaches down to take his fingers, they’re… lax and curling against hers as usual.

But —

She stares at his face.

Is that _cold sweat_?

*

_The bed is… not uncomfortable, Jaime thinks, except — it’s weird. It’s not like the mattress has changed or the covers have, it just… feels different. It’s strange, but if he asks Brienne she’ll say it’s the same as it always been, so — he’s probably making it up._

_He stands up, it’s already mid-morning, and maybe he should go outside and find Brienne, after all he hasn’t been out of here in too long even if he must have left the room at some point, except that everything is sluggish and he’s nowhere near sure of that._

_Weird._

_It’s weird._

_It didn’t feel like that until a few days ago._

_He shakes his head, slipping on his shirt, then realizing that he can’t exactly lace it with one hand and he’s thrown away the golden one a while ago, or better, he doesn’t even know where it is… he supposes he’ll have to wait for her to be back._

_Gods, he needs her to be back and fix this, whatever it is —_

_The door opens._

_“Hey,” he asks as he turns to face her, “could you give me a hand with this?”_

_“Sure,” Brienne replies, beaming, “but I think you might want to do something else first.”_

_“What?”_

_She grabs his wrist, gently places it on her swollen stomach, raising up her shirt so he can touch the skin directly —_

_Nothing happens for a moment, but then he feels a kick underneath it, and for a moment his heart goes to his throat and he feels like he’ll die right on the spot, but —_

_It felt —_

_It felt_ different _, it felt strange, not like her touches, usually they’re all soft and light even when she’s putting pressure, but that wasn’t — it was a light kick but it feels like it went right through his hand, and he moves it away at once, and maybe it’s just because he’s never — no one’s ever let him do such a thing since his mother made him feel Tyrion kicking around in her womb, but that was different, actually no, it was pretty much the same except that this one child is_ his _and maybe that’s the difference but then why did it — why it feels wrong, in comparison to everything else, in comparison to the way her hand is touching his arm?_

_Something’s wrong —_

_Something_

_is_

_very_

_wrong_

_and he doesn’t know what hedoesntknowwhatisit and he hates it he hates it **he hates it** —_

17\. _they played the homecoming theme as I caressed your cheek (that ragged, jagged melody, she still clings to me like a leech)_

“Is — I don’t know what’s wrong,” Brienne tries to not let herself cry as Sam rushes to the bed after she called for him, and gods, isn’t she glad he _didn’t_ go to Winterfell. She’s holding on to Jaime’s hand while his forehead is literally clammed in cold sweat and his face morphed into a pained expression and she’s sure his heartbeat just got faster and faster —

Sam nods, reaches out, tries to take Jaime’s wrist and he immediately yanks it out of his grasp —

— _why is it feeling like cersei’s touching him? cersei is dead, brienne said she was, that daenerys targaryen burned the city down and the red keep with it and he wasn’t there for it so why if he closes his eyes he feels like she’s there gods please no no not again —_

— and hums under his breath.

“Right,” he says, “did anything… trigger it?”

She shrugs. “Until a short while ago he was… as usual. Then — the child kicked. And — I don’t know what I was thinking but I figured that maybe if he felt it — I just, I put his hand on here,” she motions towards her stomach, “and it kicked again and _this_ happened and I don’t know what I did, gods, I — I don’t _know_ —”

“Don’t panic,” Sam says, even if he does sound a bit troubled. “I don’t think it’s… entirely negative,” he goes on, “because at least he’s _reacting_ , and not like before. Can you — can you try something?”

“Of course,” she says.

“Right. Uh, move closer than that, touch him — well. In _some_ way he might recognize for sure and tell him to call down. Speak slowly. It’s a hunch, but — just try it?”

Brienne nods, and — _some way he might recognize_?

Well.

She swallows, leans over him and takes his face between trembling hands, the way he had in Winterfell, trying to not think about what he said that one time, her thumbs running over his cheeks, moves closer the way she had back at that point —

“Jaime?” She whispers, low enough that Sam might not hear it, finding it in herself to just talk the way she used to in Winterfell. “Jaime. Darling. Calm down, please.”

For a moment, nothing happens.

Then he breathes out slower, though not as much as she’d like —

— _“jaime, darling? calm down please,” she says from somewhere near him, and he can’t see anything because he can’t open his eyes and he still feels dirty but wait, she called him like that, she hasn’t since that dream, but she_ did _before he had it, she always blushed when she did it, why is it the first time it happens? and he can try to do it but he doesn’t know how and he wants to know what’s wrong —_

— “I’ll be — it _is_ working. All right. All right, go on like that. Tell him to breathe along with you and take _slow_ breaths.”

Brienne nods, tries to keep her wits on her and to not think about how uncomfortable this position is.

“That’s good,” she says, “that’s _very_ good, now I need you to breathe slower. Just follow me, all right? _Jaime_ , please. With me, all right?”

She takes the first breath —

— _“— that’s good,” she says, and he still can’t see her but that’s oddly calming, “that’s very good, now I need you to breath slower. just follow me, all right? jaime, please. with me, all right?”_

_he doesn’t know why he can somehow hear her breathing but all right, all right, he does, tries to match his breaths to hers, once twice thrice until he loses count and he can feel her hands on his face holding on to it like they had in that idiotic dream and gods why can’t he forget it, he wants to forget it so bad, no his breathing is getting quicker and she’s telling him to pay attention to her and so he does and it’s slightly better, slightly, and then a bit more —_

_—_ and he actually does breathe along with her, and while he still keeps on sweating a bit after she risks wiping it away with a thumb before moving her hand back to his face he does get it back under control.

“Well,” Sam says, “he’s definitely hearing you. Which he probably _hadn’t_ before. Or… well. Not directly. Keep on doing that, don’t answer me or you’d risk losing him. Talk, though, I’ll… try to figure something out.”

She nods and keeps on telling him he’s done good and that he needs to go on and he _does_ , gods he does, and then it slips out of her mouth —

“Stay with me,” she blurts, realizing too late what she’s just said —

— _“stay with me,” she says, her hands holding his face, just like in that dream oh no gods no why is it the same_ why is it the same _this isn’t good this isn’t good at all why is everything so wrong when it was so right not — not even — how long ago, gods he doesn’t know, he should he should **he should** why doesn’t he know, and of course he wants to stay with her, he wants to stay with her so much but he left didn’t he_

_no_

_no he didn’t, he’s here so he didn’t_

_but this doesn’t feel right_

_her hands feel right her voice feels right they’re different_

_but he’s here_

_he didn’t_

_he couldn’t have_

_he couldn’t have done that to_ her

_could he_

_could_

_he?_

_—_

_—_

_—_ “It got worse,” Brienne whispers, and now he’s breathing faster and faster and then he makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds just fucking pained and then he moves his mouth but no sound comes out of it and she feels like he’s going to explode in flames under her and she can’t do this _now_ —

“All right,” Sam says, opening a bag he brought with, “all right, I — didn’t want to risk it, but I think you have to — perhaps he could do with… never mind. Here.”

Brienne recognizes a small vial of milk of the poppy when she sees it.

 _Are you sure_ , she mouths.

“It’s going to calm him down for good,” Sam says, “at least. And then I can tell you what I was thinking of while you’re not worried out of your mind.”

Well.

He’s the maester, not her. And he hasn’t… gotten it wrong, for now.

She takes the opened vial, moves closer, tells him to please open her mouth for her just a tiny bit, and he does and when she pours the liquid into his mouth he swallows without putting any resistance —

— _oh, he thinks, suddenly everything is hazy and he doesn’t feel her anymore except maybe vaguely, and it should feel terrifying but it’s not, and he already wasn’t seeing anything so he doesn’t know why it feels like he’s closing his eyes but it feels nice, it feels like going away inside except that why would he, he fleetingly asks himself for a moment, and then —_

_—_ “I think it worked,” Brienne says a short while later. He has his eyes closed and his hands are slack and he’s breathing regularly now, maybe even too slow.

“All right,” Sam says, putting a hand on her shoulder as she sits up and curses under her breath — her back is fucking hurting. “All right. Now, of course this is, uh, presuming as usual, but —”

“Seemed to me like you’re presuming correctly, and _I_ was the idiot who told him — well. I told him to stay with me while touching him like _that_ when he left. It was my fault, probably.”

“Did you,” Sam says. “All right, so we have to presume — you _did_ tell him you were with child?”

“Yes, but… it didn’t really go anywhere.”

“But _feeling_ it went somewhere and after he started being openly distressed he could _hear_ you, properly, and then you went and reminded him of when he left… which sent him into a panic.”

“… Seems like it,” she nods.

“I think that it’s _quite_ obvious that he really does regret that,” Sam sighs. “Right. So, _that_ put him to sleep, but it won’t last too long, it was just a small dose, and I don’t know if it means he’ll have… strange dreams or not, but at this point if we assume that he _is_ hearing you now whether he wants to or not, because _before_ he obviously didn’t… or at least not what you were really saying. So —”

“What should I do now?” She asks, her voice shakier than she’d like to be.

“He _was_ doing what you asked of him. Maybe you can talk him out of it.”

“I… could?”

“Talking hypothetically, but if it worked before… I think that now I should leave. Find a comfortable position, keep him close to you until he wakes up or until he seems to be waking up — even if he’s unresponsive like before, just keep contact and _talk_ to him. Like before. Start with easy things, like before — breathing and the likes. If he hears you… build up with something less easy. Until, well —”

“Until I tell him to wake up?”

“Ideally, yes. Just go slow and see how he reacts and change course in case and if it doesn’t work out call for me. Don’t rush it and don’t… do direct call backs to when he left, I guess. In case I can leave you another vial here.” He places it on the nightstand. Brienne nods at him.

“Thank you,” she says. “I — will call either way.”

“Good. Good luck, my lady.”

She nods and watches him leave.

Very well.

She tries to think of a position where her back won’t kill him and which won’t put pressure on the child and won’t be uncomfortable for either of them.

Eventually, she sits up with her back against the headboard, pulls him close to her side, his head at the crook of her neck, an ear right next to her mouth, her free hand caressing his cheek again.

She lets him sleep.

Gods, she — she doesn’t dare hoping it will work.

But gods, she wants it so much she could burst with it.

18\. _we were both hitchhikers but you had your ear tuned to the roar of some metal-tempered engine on an alien, distant shore_

He stirs a bit — some time later. She doesn’t know how long, but he does.

She says nothing, her throat feeling completely dry, but she tugs him closer, holding his head up.

He leans into the touch, a bit harder than usual —

— _it’s all foggy, but he thinks he feels her hand on his face again even if he can’t see her and it’s all right, then, he supposes it is_ —

“Jaime? Jaime, can — can you open your eyes?” She asks, slowly, and after a beat he kind of does, sluggish, like it’s a chore but he _can_ do that, and when he does they’re still dull and barely focused but he did, so — so he is hearing her —

— _“that’s good,” she says after he does open his eyes, except that he’s only seeing the empty yard in Winterfell and his horse isn’t there and Brienne isn’t there and nonono why he doesn’t want to be in the yard he wants that dream out of his head for good —_

— and of course his heartbeat sped up now, no, that’s not — she curls her fingers around his shoulder. “No, no, you’re all right. Breathe in, then out. It’s all right. Don’t — don’t go away, all right?” —

— _he forces himself to breathe in and out because she’s telling him to and he can hear her even if she’s not there, and he doesn’t know how it’s possible because she was here until a short while ago, wasn’t she, and then she tells him to not go away and how could he when he’s never gone anywhere, but he tries to speak and_ _he doesn’t have the words —_

_—_ he makes another pained noise at the back of his throat as his breathing calms down.

Good.

 _Good_ , now — now. Maybe if he’s hearing her she can… well. It can’t hurt. “Good. You’re doing good. Now if I ask you a question can you nod or shake your head? Not much.”

She doesn’t expect an answer.

But then he _does_ nod a tiny bit against her shoulder.

Oh.

_Oh._

“Perfect,” she goes on. “Are you in Winterfell?” —

— _he hates that he can feel her but he can’t see her, and he hates that he’s in winterfell but she asked and he said he would answer and so he nods, and she tells him good in a warm voice and then asks if he’s in the yard and he shudders and nods again feeling tears stinging his eyes again and he tries to not cry gods he doesn’t want to cry he just wants her back he wants her back so much —_

— gods, he thinks he’s in the yard. Of course he does. She breathes in. “Jaime,” she says, “do you remember what happened the last time we were there?”

He shakes his head.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

“Jaime,” she says, unable to stop the tears falling from her eyes, “darling, I’m so sorry but you have to. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter anymore. I swear it doesn’t, but you have to. Please?” —

— _what does it mean he thinks as he stands still and doesn’t nod nor shake his head what does it mean that he has to remember oh gods wait that dream does it mean that horrible dream was real does it mean he was real but she’s saying it doesn’t matter anymore but even if he does why would she want him anymore? no one could want him after such a thing especially her gods no not her she’s been treated horribly by everyone else and he had sworn himself it wouldn’t be him being the same and instead does it mean he has been oh god no no nono **no** that’s not right except it might be because then why is she gone and why is he stuck in the damned yard and why is he hearing her crying oh god she’s crying he made her cry like in that dream he can’t see it he can’t bear it he doesn’t want to hear it she shouldn’t be crying especially not for him but then if that dream was real then he’s dead but no, he can’t be dead or this wouldn’t happen and he wouldn’t feel her hands on his face as he sees her begging him to stay and he forces himself to go away inside or he won’t be able to go but then does it mean that he’s under that ceiling with cersei gods he doesn’t know anymore he was barely seeing her as the ceiling fell and he was already imagining the darkness of brienne’s room in winterfell far away from a damned castle that only ever brought him pain and no no no he can’t go back he won’t go back not when he hurt her that much he can’t he can’t he **can’t**_

_he_

_just_

**can’t**

—

—

—

—

19\. _it's not that nursery mouth that I came back for, it’s not the way you're stretched out on the floor_

She sees it didn’t go the way it was supposed to when he does _nothing_ and goes still all over again, lips slightly parted and not even moving against her, and she could be holding on to a rag doll right now, and _no_ that’s not — she’s _not_ letting him do this, fuck it, _fuck it indeed_ —

“No,” she blurts, and at this point she doesn’t stop herself from sobbing, and if her heart rate is going out of control fast and her hands are shaking it’s beside the point, she needs to — to _do something_ about this already, “no, don’t, gods don’t do that, you don’t need to run off _inside_ or wherever it is that you go when you think that things are gone to shit, not now, do you think that I came back all the way from Winterfell to see you like _this_ or to see you die or to hear some more bullshit about how you’re hateful and I deserve better than you, I came back for _you_ , you — I came back for you the way you came back _for me_ in Harrenhal and back then you didn’t exactly hide anywhere. No, you jumped in front of bears to save my life when you barely even could stand up, didn’t you? _That_ ’s who you are, damn it, I refuse to think otherwise and you don’t have to do this, and I know you can hear me, you did before, so just listen to me when I say I forgive you and we can talk about it and I swear I won’t hold Winterfell against you, I’m beyond caring, just — we’ve been through too much. Please stop. Just _stop_ , you don’t have to do that anymore, don’t do this to me, I can’t see you like this anymore,” she sobs, and now she’s crying openly and her heart rate is out of control and her hands are shaking so hard she can barely hold on to him and she wants to throw up —

—

—

_wait_

_wait_

_wait he can hear her crying and he can feel that she’s saying something but it’s barely audible but he can feel the tone and wait is she afraid_

_she sounds afraid_

_why would she be she never was in all the time he knew her not even when she was sure the damned bloody mummers would rape her but no_

_no_

_no wait of course_

_it was in the bear pit of course she was afraid in the bear pit he could feel it in the way her hands shook when she hauled him up and in the way her heart beat so fast when she hauled him up and in how she looked like she couldn’t believe they survived and that he came back for her, she even asked him why he did and he said he dreamed of her and she looked surprised at that and he had to tell her that_

_so_

_so she’s afraid now, so she must be in danger_

_and he shouldn’t_

_she’s in danger — he can’t — she deserves better but — if she’s in danger — he should leave her for good he tried to make her hate him — but she’s in danger_ now _isn’t she, he can feel that and she is she is she is_

_and he wanted to die but — if she’s in danger he cannot allow it, he cannot, he should — go back maybe —_

_no one else would back when he did the first time so if it’s not him —_

_if it was about him he wouldn’t care but_

_it’s about her now_

_he came back for her once_

_he could do it twice_

_maybe he could_

_he thinks he would like to see her one last time —_

—

—

—

—

20\. _and your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free_

“… Brienne?”

For a moment, she thinks she imagined it, and she’s about to start insulting him _again_ , but then she goes dead in her tracks — it was too low, too tentative, too shaky for her to have made it up, and she had her eyes closed but she opens them at once and —

Oh.

Jaime is still leaning on her, his left arm around her waist where she put it before, but — but his head isn’t hanging listlessly, he’s holding it up and he’s looking up at her with _bright_ green eyes, blinking at her slowly as if he can’t quite focus the sight, but he’s _seeing_ her and his cheeks are a bit flushed and his right arm is tentatively moving, and wait oh _he came back_ , and she tries to not break down in tears again as she nods once, twice, and then moves her hand to his face again and this time he presses into it with a sigh, moving slowly and without any of his usual grace, but —

She can worry about that later, she can —

“There — there you are,” she whispers, “it’s been _months_ , what have you even done until now?”

It’s not what she had thought she’d ask.

But —

But she has to know, she has to —

Gods, she wants to kiss him so much but she needs to know first —

His lips still tremble when he smiles a bit wider. She doesn’t know what she’s expecting, but —

“I,” he says, with the voice of someone who hasn’t spoke for a long time, “I dreamed of you.”

There —

There are a lot of things that she could say to that, and oh gods, so they were right, indeed they were right, and she _will_ tell him later, she supposes, but it’s not the time now and she’s tired and she needs to make him _get_ that while they’ll have to talk later for now she just wants him to know he doesn’t have to anywhere she’s not, and so she lets herself smile as she says, “Of course you did,” and then she inches closer and he sighs into it when she kisses him, his hands suddenly grasping tight at her back.

“You’re real now,” he slurs against her mouth, tentatively, like he’s not sure, and of course he wouldn’t be.

“I am,” she says, “I am, and _this_ is real, too,” she adds, moving his hand to her stomach, and she can see recognition in his eyes, and she can see he will ask her about it _later_ , and he sounds tentative and cautiously hopeful when he whispers, _could you kiss me again then_ —

There’s really nothing more she’d rather do now.

She nods, and so she does.

TBC


	3. epilogue

21\. _and who am I to ask you to lick my sores?_

“So,” Brienne asks later, she doesn’t even know how long — enough that she’s sure he won’t bail on her, “do you think we _could_ discuss things before most of the court comes back from Winterfell, your brother included?”

There’s a flash of guilt in Jaime’s eyes when she mentions Tyrion, but… but he doesn’t shut off at once like she had been terrified he might do.

“I can’t believe it had been this long,” he croaks moments later, his left hand trembling slightly over the covers.

She takes it, supposing that it might give him the idea that she’s not bailing _now_.

“Honestly, I’m…” She shakes her head. “Listen, I don’t want this to be… long or more painful that it has to be. It’s been that long and I worked through most of what I had to on my own, I just think that _you_ didn’t, so… should I just speak and then you can say your piece?”

“Please,” he shrugs, “I don’t know if I could start first.”

Fair.

“Well then. You hurt me. _Don’t_ do look at me like that. I know you didn’t… _want_ to, deep down, and I know you regretted it, and I think I know why you were thinking, and I don’t — hold it against you. But you did. You know that, right?”

“I do,” Jaime admits, sounding pained. His hand is still holding hers, though. Gods, it’s — she could weep just at seeing him talk and _move_ , and she wishes she could ignore the rest, _but_ —

No.

They won’t get anywhere if she does.

“I want to know why you did it and what was going through your head when you did it and what was going through your head in these months. I don’t know if you heard what I told you at the end —”

“No,” Jaime shakes his head. “I… probably not.”

“Then I suppose I can repeat it later. I doubt that I will change my mind. So, can you tell me? I think you owe me _that_.”

“I owe you more than that,” Jaime says. “And you deserve —”

“What I deserve or not is my choice. Don’t try to get out of it like _that_. Just — just tell me.”

He nods, still not quite looking at her.

“Do I _have_ to tell you how it was between me and Cersei?” His mouth twists on the name.

“Your brother said enough,” Brienne says. “Not if you don’t want to _now_.”

“Good,” he says. “Well. I — when I came North. I thought I was done. I _really_ thought I was. I wanted to be done. I was tired of everything, I couldn’t keep on lying to myself when she put her throne before the entirety of the realm and I couldn’t keep on telling myself I hadn’t wanted _you_ for years. I — I meant everything, in Winterfell. I _didn’t_ want to leave. I wanted to stay.”

“All right. But you didn’t.”

“I — I heard that — well. That letter. The one Lady Sansa received. She was none too courteous in reminding me she hoped someone would cut off Cersei’s head. And even if then Bronn showed up telling me and Tyrion that she had wanted him to kill us, I just — I couldn’t — I had a voice in my head saying I didn’t deserve anything of what I had. That — that if she died and I wasn’t there with her then my life had no worth. And it just — it wouldn’t shut up, and I wish I had been stronger, but — I was always remarkably bad at resisting it. Or at dealing with my issues without… removing myself from them.”

He stops, clearing his throat. She hands him a cup of water from the side of the bed, letting his hand go enough for him to drink some. His fingers tentatively find hers again. They’re clammed.

“Do you mean…” She prods softly.

“Going away inside? Yes,” he sighs. “It’s just… so much easier to pretend you don’t care and think about something else and go through the motions. I — I didn’t — I _was_ with you when we shared that bed for the last time. Then — then I did because just watching you on that bed was _paining_ me, and when we met in the yard…” She shakes his head again. “You _did_ hear I was reciting a part, didn't you.”

“Jaime, you were crushing my hand. Maybe I did.”

“Well. It was what she always said I was. Do you know how old were we when she told me we would die together for the first time?”

“No,” she says. “Tell me?”

He laughs. It’s not a nice laugh. “That I _remember_? Six. That I _don’t_? Maybe earlier. Thinking on it, I don’t remember a lot of… the specific things we’ve done until I joined the Kingsguard. But I didn’t start considering that I could _not_ die with her until I came North. I don’t — I don’t want it to be an excuse, Brienne.” He sounds tired. “But at the moment I couldn’t… conceive otherwise.”

Brienne thinks she wants to throw up.

How do you live _all your life_ thinking that you’re not worth surviving someone else?

“That’s all right,” she says. “Go ahead.”

He shrugs. “I went away inside when I told you that, I _stayed_ there on the way to King’s Landing, and when Tyrion freed me — I was — I was so deep into it, I barely remember what bullshit excuse I told him to explain it. I couldn’t even _mention_ you because doing that would — it would make me come back, probably, and I couldn’t handle it. Because then I would have to face what I had done and… well. That was the point of _leaving_.”

“I understand,” she says.

“Well. There’s… not much else. By the time I got to her, I was — I was so detached, I just — I told her something to make her feel better about fucking dying, but I don’t even remember much because at some point I just closed my eyes and wished I had never come.”

He stays silent for a while.

Then —

“Then I just — I dreamed I was in Winterfell for a while and everything was dark and I wouldn’t get out of bed, then you showed up, I suppose when… when you actually did arrive, and — you said what I wanted to hear, I guess.”

“… From then onwards?”

“Until you had me touch…” He trails away, nods at her round stomach. “That felt — _different_. And suddenly nothing held up anymore. Uh, by chance, did you ever… wash my hair or…?”

“You wouldn’t let anyone else touch you enough to give you a bath,” she says, “of course I washed your hair. Why, did —”

“You did in that dream, too. You also _did_ tell me you were with child, didn’t you?”

“ _Here_? Yes. Did —”

“Yes. I mean… at this point I suppose I _heard_ you, but… just what I wanted to. It — it hadn’t been so bad since Aerys.”

“… _Aerys_?”

“What do you think I did when he burned people in front of me? I’d picture being with Cersei in the woods near the Rock and kissing her or running after my brother on the beach, and I did it for… hours. Probably longer. I lost entire days to it. But I guess this time I lost what, four months? Five?”

“And what made you come back?” Her throat feels sore as she speaks.

Jaime breathes.

“I didn’t hear anything. I mean, I knew I had been lying to myself all along — where I went, leaving you had been a nightmare and dying with her, too. But that just — I could hear you for real at the end, and so I couldn’t deny it anymore, but then I _felt_ you. You sounded afraid and your heart beat was too fast, and I think I thought it was… another bear pit. Or that you were in serious danger. And — I had to try and come back,” he finally admits, sounding like he will cry. “I _couldn’t_ not. So — _that_ made me do it. That’s — that’s about it.”

Oh.

_Oh_.

Good gods, she had supposed it was the case, but — _but_ —

“I _am_ sorry, you know,” he says. “I mean, not just… that I hurt you. But — that _this_ is what you have to deal with. I don’t want to blame _her_ for my shortcomings. And —”

“Jaime, while I was trying to get you to come back at the end, I said I forgave you,” she cuts, unable to listen to _that_ drivel for a second longer.

_Now_ he looks at her, green eyes staring into hers like he can’t believe it.

“You did _what_ ,” he whispers, his hand shaking wildly.

“ _I forgive you_ , you idiot,” she says, moving closer. “You hurt me and you’re obviously sorry for it, and I think you paid enough for it and for whatever other shortcoming of yours. Gods, you spent your entire life thinking _you couldn’t exist without another person because she never let you conceive the contrary_ , and now I should hate you after — after all of this? After you apparently spent four months inside your own head being _happy with me_?”

“I just wish I had the guts to be happy with you outside my own damned head,” he admits, and she can’t stop a few tears falling from her eyes as she shakes her head and drags him closer, holding him to her again, and when he hugs her back _meaning it_ she kind of wants to cry harder, but —

Not yet.

“Well, you can make up for it now. I don’t want to raise this child alone and you can forget I would let you off the hook for it, and I think it’s been — I can — gods, Jaime, you think I would have stayed four months here for just anyone? I don’t want anyone else. I just want _you_. I want to forget about this and I want to move on. Now, do you?”

“What do you think?” He about sobs into her shoulders. “If I could erase my damned sister from my mind I _would_. Of course I want to. I’m just — _why_ would you? I did hurt you.”

“And I told you already that you’re forgiven and that if I hated you that much I wouldn’t have come back.”

He nods against her shoulder and doesn’t move for a while.

His eyes are red-rimmed when he does.

Brienne figures there’s no point in stalling.

“You did come for me once, at the bear pit,” she says. “When no one else would.”

“I… I did, I guess. And?”

“Let me do that for you,” she says, her hand going to his face. “It’s not the same thing, but I would have wanted to help you in Winterfell and I want to do it now. You didn’t trust me with it, but that’s — I get why. Can we do better now?”

His mouth tastes like salt when he kisses her in response.

She kisses him back and decides it’s been enough talking for today.

22\. _you wouldn't even give me time to cover my tracks_

“I should punch you in the face for how fucking worried you made me,” Tyrion tries to not scream the moment he _finally_ sees Jaime sitting on the bed and actually _looking_ at him — Brienne did tell him that in the couple weeks it took them to get back from Winterfell he _did_ improve drastically even if he has good and bad days, and she was right because now he doesn’t look too thin and surely he doesn’t seem like he wants to commit suicide the way he did outside King’s Landing before Daenerys took it, even if she did tell him it wasn’t a particularly good day before she let him into the room and went out to destroy a few practice dummies, most likely. He doesn’t scream. He still can’t help saying it, because _fuck him_ , Tyrion had despaired of ever seeing him standing again and he’s _tired_ and those weddings exhausted him in ways he hadn’t thought possible — good thing he _can_ manage diplomacy, but as it is he just wants to bury any hatchets left with Bronn, drag him out for _good_ drinks and get royally fucking drunk until tomorrow.

_After_ he talks to Jaime.

“You should,” Jaime says, and he sounds so deathly serious that Tyrion almost does a double take.

“… I didn’t _mean_ it,” Tyrion says, wishing he hadn’t opened his mouth before thinking — that was the goddamned _last_ answer he wanted.

“ _She_ didn’t,” Jaime sighs, glancing wistfully at the bed before looking back at him, “ _someone_ should.”

“Seven Hells, I’m _sure_ Bronn can’t wait to take that job. Jaime, what the _fuck_?”

He shrugs again. “Feels like I deserve someone doing that, and no one has until now, and — never mind.”

Tyrion is going to scream for wholly different reasons.

“Jaime, fuck’s sake, I wasn’t even hoping I would ever see you _proper_ again and the first thing you have to say is that you deserve punches in the face when _she_ forgave you the moment she looked at you and you wronged her most of all?”

“… She didn’t,” Jaime whispers, suddenly going still.

“She _did_ , I was there when she arrived here. It was obvious and she had no idea yet. But — gods, you were supposed to tell me something in equal bad taste so we could have had a laugh about this entire mess, not to _mean_ it.”

For a moment, Jaime says nothing, his left hand grasping the cloth of his trousers so tight it has to hurt… before he looks at him again, half-smiling and looking like he wants to cry.

“I —,” he starts, “I think I might’ve forgotten that.”

“Yeah, well,” he blurts, “I’m not punching you in the face also because I think our sweet sister did it enough for anyone else and you don’t need _that_ , but you know how it is that you survived the part where _the Red Keep fell on your head_?”

“… No one told me, no,” Jaime says.

“ _I_ ,” Tyrion says, “had to dig through that fucking rubble on my own and ended up finding Cersei’s corpse with her damned head bashed in first _and_ you later, and I thought you were fucking dead until I realized you weren’t, and if you think that during the minute in which I was sure _I_ was the last Lannister left _and_ that you had died for absolutely fucking nothing I also didn’t wish I never let you go back to King’s Landing the moment you started saying bullshit that I knew you didn’t think, you’re wrong. You’re abysmally wrong. Now, can you _please_ at least swear to me that you’re done trying to ruin yourself because of our fucking sister or her ghost or whatever _and_ tell me something exceedingly stupid to disrupt the tension and then we can move on with our life as we always did?”

Jaime keeps on just _staring_ at him, his mouth still curled in that half-smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and gods if he got _better_ in this month he doesn’t want to know how he was _before_ —

“I think,” he says, quietly, like he’s admitting some kind of very, very deep secret, “that I don’t know if I can pretend that things are fine because I disrupted the tension anymore, these days. And — I — I don’t know what I was doing. I didn’t want you to find me, I didn’t even know what the fuck I wanted.”

“Do you now?” Tyrion asks, figuring that at least he should ask _that_.

“Well.” He stops, breathes, looks back up at him. “What I know for sure _now_ is that _then_ I didn’t know how to want something that Cersei didn’t without feeling like I didn’t deserve it.”

And he sounds so — so matter of fact as he says it, Tyrion can’t just stand there anymore.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he says before moving closer to the bed and dragging him down so he can hug him without feeling like it’ll be the last time, and for a moment it’s awkward because Jaime kind of stumbles down without much grace but then he _does_ hold back to him, strong enough Tyrion feels breathless for a moment, and he _knows_ they’ll be fine, eventually.

And at least it doesn’t feel like he’s going to feel like he has to watch him die for the third time.

23. _like a little girl with a trophy so soft to buy her way_

“Ser Jaime,” Dany says, trying to keep her voice even. “This conversation has been… overdue, hasn’t it?”

“Your Grace,” he replies, his voice guarded as well, “I think so.”

He _did_ kneel, the moment he could, Dany reasons, and if the lady and Tyrion swear left and right that he can be trusted she supposes she will believe them… for now, at least. Admittedly, _Jon_ also said he was to be trusted after they spoke for a long time through one week not long after they were back from Winterfell, and Jon wouldn’t — he _wouldn’t_ lie about it, she thinks.

“Then I should like to hear about my — my father from _you_.”

He snorts a little, and Dany thinks he looks… strangely humble in the nondescript white shirt and dark trousers he’s wearing. No House sigils, no gold, no red, he refused any of that staunchly. He only kept the sword that was the lady’s twin, but nothing more. He looks up at her with bright green eyes that for a moment remind her of wildfire, squaring his shoulders.

“I don’t know what others told you about him,” he finally says, “nor what Barristan had to say about me, but your father — he wasn’t fit for kingship, spent all the time I served him burning people alive for the slightest suspicion and once killed Ned Stark’s brother and father at the same time, one cooked alive in his own armor and the other strangling himself while trying to reach him, and when I had to stand and watch it happen I was… not much older than you were when you hatched those dragons, Your Grace. Maybe the same age.”

Her first instinct is telling him to shut up, she doesn’t want to hear how _bitter_ he sounds as he speaks about a father she never knew —

But hadn’t she told Varys once that she didn’t want to be like _him_ , and now — well. Now she _almost_ did become like him. Didn’t she. So she supposes she’ll let him finish.

“I killed him because he wanted to burn down the entire city,” he sighs.

She can’t help flinching. Gods, _what has she done_ —

“And someone would have followed that order. I spent two years asking everyone else in the guard how could we let him — do what he did. But that’s not even the worst thing. Admittedly that was the last straw.”

He says nothing for a long time as he looks at her.

Then he half-smiles, just barely.

“You _do_ look like her,” he finally says.

“ _Her_?”

“Hasn’t any of your former advisors ever talked to you about your mother?” He asks, and —

Oh.

She has to stop and think about it.

Admittedly, not.

“Maybe my brother a few times,” she says, haltingly, hating that it’s how it comes out of her mouth. “But he did not… relish it. I think he hated that she died because of me.”

“She didn’t _die_ because of you,” Ser Jaime says, his tone suddenly harsher. “May — may I say something you don’t wish to hear? A long time ago I would not have cared, but as it is, I would rather know.”

“Please do,” she says. “I do respect the lady Brienne and I wouldn’t want her to resent me for your death, _Ser_.”

“Very well. _You_ were not your mother’s problem. Your _father_ was, because if he hadn’t forced her to bed him at his whim and forced her to go through a number of miscarriages that no woman should be forced through, then _maybe_ she wouldn’t have died giving birth to _you_ after traveling all the way to Dragonstone, and believe me when I say that the worst thing about serving your father was that I had to stand outside the door when he forced her and could do nothing to stop it because while we had sworn to protect the King’s family, I was told it wasn’t to protect them _from him_.”

He says nothing after that, taking in deep breaths and not looking at her as if it _pains_ him to even think about it.

Dany thinks she wants to stand up and leave because this is not what she had been expecting and no one ever told her _that_ —

Except that he’s not lying and he sounds heartbroken over that still and it’s been _years_.

“I think I learned to — go away on purpose outside her door,” he finally admits. “I don’t even remember when I started. I just knew I didn’t want to be there and I couldn’t do anything else and somehow it _always_ was me having to do it.”

“How — how was she? My mother, I mean. Barristan only ever said she was dutiful,” Dany asks, and she hates that it sounds like she’s almost begging him for details… except that no one else volunteered that information now, did they?

He laughs, but it’s not the laugh of someone who thinks it hilarious.

“Oh, she _was_. She gave up her entire life for Aerys when she never had a choice in it, of course she was _dutiful_. So dutiful she had to suffer through a string of dead children that would have killed most mothers long before your brother Viserys was born, and that was when her first was born during a fire that killed a good part of her family. He treated her like dirt, at the end he forced her only after he’d see someone burned because he thought he needed to birth a dragon or whatever was it that was going through his head, and she still was — good to your brother and tried to keep him from the worst of his father. I guess she did manage _that_.” He shakes his head, then looks back up at her. “I mean, I also was not there when he deprived her of all her ladies in waiting and accused her of being unfaithful, as if _she_ would be, but — from what I saw, she was kind, and she didn’t deserve any of what your father put her through, and she _did_ look like you.”

She wishes this wasn’t so — so uncomfortable to hear, but at least he’s not lying to spare her feelings.

“Do I only _look_ like her?” She finally asks. She has a feeling that she knows the answer.

“From what my brother says about you,” he replies a moment later, “no, because I cannot see your father ever doing the _good_ things he said you have done in Essos. On the other side, he _did_ want to burn King’s Landing, but so did Cersei and so _sort of_ had Cersei, with _his_ fucking wildfire that was under the sept, and _that_ wasn’t enough to make me run from her when I should have, and what happened was… well. I suppose you did not do it out of thinking you would be reborn a dragon yourself _after_ having terrorized the entire realm, and he certainly didn’t go around lending people dragons and armies to protect them from undead men, so I suppose you aren’t _his_ daughter in that sense either, and you should only be glad of it.”

Her first instinct is telling him to shut up.

She doesn’t.

He’s — it hurts to admit it, but he’s right, if everything he says is true, and why wouldn’t it be? She can hear that he’s gaining nothing in lying to her.

She doesn’t know why she wants to tell _him_ out of everyone, but — maybe it’s because he has no stakes in it and he only has reasons to judge her negatively and he hasn’t done such a thing yet.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I wonder if — well. She _did_ die after I was born. If she resented me.” She can’t know that. Surely a lot of times she thought that _Viserys_ resented her for their mother’s death, especially after he sold her crown.

“No,” he says at once. “No, she wouldn’t have, because if there is one thing I know for sure also from talking to Rhaegar was how she hated down to her very essence that she survived eight of her children on ten, _at least_ , and she would have wanted you to live. Besides, it wasn’t _your_ fault if by the time you were born she had suffered that much, and she wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“I doubt she’d have appreciated what I did, though.”

“No,” he concedes, “but then again I think she’d have understood what it meant to lose — that dragon, I guess.”

“What,” she asks, “is it strange that I considered all of them _my children_?”

“To us mere mortals who cannot hatch dragons it _might_ , but never mind that.” He sounds wistful. Of course he does.

“And what do _you_ know about that?”

“What, losing children?” He wheezes, wiping at his eyes. “Your Grace, I saw two of them die in front of me and I might not have cared for one of them but I certainly did for the second, the third _killed himself_ when I wasn’t even there, and my sister never even let me _know_ them. I think I had Myrcella for the whole of a minute before she died in my arms and maybe I shouldn’t have had her at all at that point, but — I think I know but not in the way _you_ do and the way your mother did, and I sure as the Seven Hells hope I never have the displeasure. Anyway, your mother would _not_ have hated you for any of this. And I certainly cannot presume to give you any advice whatsoever, but consider not worrying about your father’s damned legacy. It would only do everyone good.”

She nods, taking it in. He’s… not wrong, as much as it hurts to admit.

“Do you think I will become like him?” She finally asks. She needs to know, even if she might not like the answer.

“I’m done presuming people have to be like… their relatives,” he finally says after a long pause. “You should be your own person, but if you have to look up to any of your parents, _he_ is not the one you want. If I may express myself so boldly.”

“You may,” she says, standing up and smoothing down her dress. “We _should_ have had this talk in Winterfell, shouldn’t we?”

“We should have done a lot of different things in Winterfell,” he agrees. “But for what it’s worth, I think that I see now what my brother means when he talks about you in such great terms.”

“Well, I can see what both he and the lady mean when they talk about _you_ in good terms, I suppose. Have a good day, Ser. And for what it’s worth, I’m — I’m sorry that my father hurt you that much. That wasn’t fair on you.”

“You don’t have to apologize for _him_ or I should apologize for _mine_ own father and we would be here until the next Long Night. If you see the lady, would you mind sending her up?” He asks, suddenly sounding like he _really_ needs to talk to Brienne, except that he doesn’t really roam the castle lately. For good reason.

“I think she and Jon were… discussing things when it came to reshaping the Queensguard. He wanted advice. I — I will get her.”

“Thank you. Your Grace.”

“Ser Jaime,” she nods, and leaves the room wishing her heart wasn’t pounding.

They _did_ need to have that conversation.

She _will_ think about it.

She heads for the yard where most likely the lady and Jon are still discussing how to rebuild, and she thinks she _will_ talk to him more. Just not now.

Still, if Brienne accept a position at court and he won’t leave her side, she won’t feel like she has to worry about him being anywhere near her.

_That_ , she definitely doesn’t.

24\. _don’t give me my money, I don’t want it back_

“Nice to see that you _definitely_ got your head out of your arse.”

“Says the one who was hired to _kill me_ ,” Jaime snorts, but if he thinks _that_ is what will win him this conversation, he’s wrong.

“And did _I_ kill you? Sure as fuck I did not. _You_ were the cunt who decided to _come back here_ when I traveled all the way to fucking Winterfell to inform you and your brother that she was after the fucking both of you instead of, like, _killing you_ directly, so take that excuse and stuff it somewhere else.”

Jaime _does_ roll his eyes at that. “Oh, because there was no gain in it for you, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, _that_ was a comeback actually worthy of your usual,” Bronn says, nodding in satisfaction, “and so what? I never made a mystery of my position on the topic.”

“What, that you’ll sell your soul for gold?”

“Of course not,” Bronn scoffs, “that my primary target in life has always been _security_ , why do you think I wanted a castle that much?”

“I guess you’re disappointed about _that_ now?” There’s little to no bite in the question. It’s _almost_ disappointing.

Bronn thinks he might need to prod harder.

“Nah,” he shakes his head, “as things are now, it’s pretty much as if _I_ had one, and it’s even the one that should have been yours, therefore —”

“Do _not_ ,” Jaime interrupts, “remind me of the implication of my brother making you his bloody _personal secretary_ because there’s a fucking limit to what I need to know on that topic and it was surpassed already.”

_Maybe_ they’re getting there, Bronn decides. He still has a short while left, after all. Maybe he can just go all in.

“See,” he says, “that’s where you are no fun, Lannister. Because at the implication that you’re about to take the lady’s cloak, my first reaction wouldn’t be to prevent myself from thinking about _what comes from it_ , because —”

“Do _not_ ,” Jaime interrupts, “point out again that before your newly secretarial duties made, what did you say, _a somewhat honest man out of you_ , you’d have fucked us both because I think no one needs to hear that.”

“Why, would you deny my good taste?”

“Oh, how about you go get fucked already, you insufferable —”

“ _Finally_ ,” Bronn grins, “ _finally_. Lannister, you will _always_ be a blessing to my earnings.”

“… What the _fuck_ , Bronn?”

“Oh, your brother was lamenting that since he came back you _lost your bite_ and you don’t insult people freely anymore and that makes him feel like something is inherently wrong with you and your lady _kind of_ agreed on that —”

“And _when_ did they tell you this?”

“The last time we all went out for drinks, when _you_ declined when we _all_ invited you.”

“… Right, and?”

“And I bet them a hundred gold pieces each that I could make you insult _me_ freely in less than an hours’ time, Pod is somewhere around here eavesdropping this conversation so I have a witness, and now I absolutely made you do that, so now I’m two hundred gold pieces richer thanks to you. Never change, it’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

“Bronn, for —”

“And _stop_ letting whatever the fuck happened turn you into someone you’re not, Lannister. Your horrid sense of humor was absolutely one of the reasons it was so charming to hang out with you in the Riverlands, and I absolutely wouldn’t have jumped in front of a dragon to save your sorry arse if I had thought you were _boring_. Don’t be a cunt and live a little, I have to go see your brother now and I’m sure he will be _plenty_ thankful for —”

“Shut the _fuck_ up, Bronn,” Jaime says, sounding pained, but it’s obvious he doesn’t mean it, and he _kind_ of looks like he will laugh when he’s gone, so Bronn decides that all in all he handled this perfectly.

“I won’t tell you to make me, but in case your brother agrees to the occasional —”

“ _Shut the fuck up_ ,” Jaime groans back, and Bronn merely grins at him before leaving.

Good.

He _absolutely_ earned those two hundred pieces of gold, and if he _might_ have done that regardless even without the bet because it was getting fucking creepy to talk to Jaime without hearing at least _one_ joke in poor taste in return… well, no one has to know that. He _does_ have a reputation to uphold.

25\. _and you should know that's true_

“Lady Brienne?” Jon asks, and Brienne nods at him as he comes inside her rooms — she _does_ need to give him the round-up on the last appointments she made for the city guard.

“Your — _Jon_ ,” she corrects herself, remembering that he hates when people in the Small Council use his title, and while she’s not in it technically as the Gold Cloaks commander, she’s still invited to most meetings and since he’s Master of Laws and he _had_ wanted to reform the Watch as well, they have been working closely together lately. She just tends to forget if they hadn’t talked in private for a while. “Can I help you?”

“You weren’t at the last council meeting, so I figured I would give you the… salient points.”

“Please,” she says, “go ahead. Sorry, these last few months have been —”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Jon interrupts, “no one is expecting you to be there all the time, all things considered. Anyway, Lord Davos’s work on the fleet is almost finished, Grey Worm says he only needs one last appointment for the Queensguard and would like your opinion on the last three candidates he has left when you can give it to him —”

“Would tomorrow be amenable?”

“Most likely,” Jon nods, “I will tell him. Also, it looks like Lady Sarella’s plan of forfeiting taxes for the last six months _has_ produced a surge in spending across the realm, or at least she reports a lot less lords concerned about their villages dying out because no one has any coin to spend. My sister is still off looking into those rumors concerning Lady Westerling —”

Brienne groans. “Do _not_ tell me she’s scheming to have her family be given the Twins, _again_?”

Jon sighs. “Sadly it seems like it. We told Arya to dissuade her for good, she said she would in time to go back to Storm’s End before the next moon, so… we’ll see, I suppose.”

“Has the Queen sent word?”

Jon nods. “Apparently Dragonstone is… a sight, these days.”

Brienne doesn’t doubt it — since two dragons long thought dead showed up there, and Sam almost _fainted_ when he realized that they were the famed Sheepstealer and the one people had dubbed the Cannibal, and Drogon flew to meet them… well.

From what the letters Daenerys sent them said, the Cannibal was _not_ in fact a male dragon, and the island is littered in eggs again.

Jon seemed more tentatively cautious than her at the prospect of _that many_ potential new dragons, but Brienne _could_ see that he’s been… well, _intrigued_ since getting the news.

He _is_ part Targaryen, after all, but she supposes this will be something to worry about when those eggs hatch.

“Well, I suppose… best luck with _that_.”

“I hope so, too. Uh, by the way, your lord husband hasn’t been around the castle for the entire morning. Tyrion was _obviously_ worried about it, but —”

“It’s all right,” Brienne says, standing up, “I know where he is.”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “May I know so at least Tyrion doesn’t fret for the entire day?”

She smiles a bit, heading for the door. “He’s at the beach,” she says. “Today wasn’t… the best. I mean, he still doesn’t sleep well a lot of times. When that happens he just goes there for a while, but it’s fine. He knows to expect me after I’m finished and I think he does need to be alone sometimes, but really. Tyrion can get his drinks with Bronn without worrying.”

“I will refer then. My lady,” he bows his head.

“Jon,” she bows hers, and they go their opposite ways as he goes back to his quarters and she heads for their own rooms to get out of her armor and into more comfortable clothing before going to the beach.

She hasn’t quite figured out why Jaime would find relaxing to go somewhere he was almost killed, but… it _is_ a lovely strip of beach. And it’s not the inside of the Red Keep, and if he wants peace and quiet it is the nearest place around where he could get one.

She _has_ thought of resigning her post and going to Tarth because it’s obvious he doesn’t relish being _here_ , but Jaime told her that he didn’t mind being staying in the Red Keep until they had need of her while rebuilding things around the city, and admittedly, she _is_ needed and will likely be for a while. Other than that… she’s not going to question what he swore up and down was his decision, so… not yet. Maybe she can ask Jon to give them quarters somewhere else, but — well. For now she isn’t going back to Tarth yet. She _could_ invite her father soon, though. Things are good enough for that, now.

She doesn’t bother putting on Oathkeeper as she heads through the newly rebuilt tunnels and reaches the beach.

She can’t help smiling when she does see him — he’s sitting on the beach, the waves barely touching his bare feet, his back to her.

When she sits down next to him, she’s absolutely not surprised to see that their daughter is sleeping against his chest — of course he brought her with. He always brings her with when he comes here.

“Hey,” she says, her legs touching his. “Doing better?”

“Than that shitstorm that was tonight? Yes,” he says, turning to her, and he’s looking at her the way he had before he kissed her for the first time, except that now his hair is longer and while he still hasn’t put back on all the muscle he lost he does look better _now._ As if _all of him_ is with her, and not just half.

“And how is _she_ doing?”

“Barely even cried,” he scoffs fondly, his hand cradling the back of Catelyn’s head — Brienne had honestly not even known if she hoped for a girl or a boy nor _how_ she had hoped for them to look, but when it turned out that it was a girl and that she was _his_ split image except for the eyes — golden blonde curls and delicate features with blue eyes that are exactly like Brienne’s, and when he had burst out crying the moment he was let into her room, she was honestly glad of it. She _knew_ the only one of his children that ever acknowledged that he was her father was Myrcella, and if now he can know another daughter first, well, that’s… she’s glad of it.

Honestly, _he_ is entirely more of a natural at handling children than _she_ is, but that’s fine — she’s learning, she thinks, and she’s better at it than she’d have imagined when she thought no one ever _would_ want any with her, and she had been right, she couldn’t have done it without him and she wouldn’t have even wanted to… but that’s not something she has to worry about now, is it?

She clears her throat, moves her hands around his wrist — he’s not wearing any fake hands these days — and wraps her fingers around it while he holds Cat to him with the left arm.

“Good,” she says, not failing to notice that Jaime is wearing _her_ shirt on top of everything. Which he only does if he slept particularly badly, which was the case, and one day she’d have pretended not to notice, but she’s done doing that. “And after we put her to bed later,” she says, “do you think I should take my time with you?”

The way his eyes soften at that is never _not_ going to make her feel like someone just squeezed her heart _hard_. “Well,” he says, “admittedly, it’s been a few days since you _took your time with me_ , lady wife, and I might have sorely missed it. I would be exceedingly glad if you did it.”

“Deal then,” she says, moving her hand around his shoulder and pulling him a bit closer. “I _could_ try to tire you out so much that you will be too tired to do anything but pass out.”

He grins a bit wider. “You’re absolutely welcome to try,” he says, right against her lips, and then, “but you could start now, you know.”

“I don’t see why not,” she replies, and kisses him before he can try to have the last word, and as he surges against her, their lips pressing together and his tongue leaving her access as she moves a hand behind his head and draws him closer, she knows that as much as people look at the two of them wrong sometimes still, or whisper that she has settled and someone with self-respect would have never come back, she _wouldn’t_ change a single decision she took since the moment she let him inside her room in Winterfell knowing he would kiss her.

Other people don’t know what she’d have given up, if she had not come back for the only man who ever _did_ do the same for her in her entire life, and they can keep their whispering. After all, haven’t the both of them always done what they wanted regardless of dumb whispers?

No, she’s glad with what she has right now and so is he, and they both know it’s true for the both of them, and everything else really doesn’t matter. Not at all.

End.


End file.
